VOYAGEA Journey of Learning Through Space

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CONTENTSSpace Hardware Photo Feature 4

Other Features

38 Sci-Fi Focus - The Trouble with Time

Great Puzzles and Competitions

PLUSSpace Stamps 14 A Launch in French Guiana 24Did You Know 30 Re-Entry: Vikings on Mars 44

Test your knowledge of space with: Get your entry in the next issue of VoyagePuzzle Page on page 12 Caption Competition on page 13Giant Wordsearch on page 31 Photo Competition on page 37

WIN AN ESA ISS learning kit in our great competition on PAGE 16

With Doctor Who making a successful return to our TV screens, MAT IRVINE examines the possibilities of travelling in time and looksat the many complications that could happen.

8 Climate Change - The Big PictureHow much damage are humans really doing to our planet. Is the problem all down to us, or is the Earthgoing through one of its regular climate shifts? JOHNATHAN LEVY investigates

Mr Pilbeam’s Laboratory No 3: Mars Rover 18The third of our Mr Pilbeam experiment series looks at designing and making a Mars Rover out of basic materials.

26 The Night SkyBeginning Asronomy - Part 3. Last issue, we looked at the best equipment to buy to get you started inastronomy. This time, DAVE BUTTERY takes this further and looks at eyepieces and stands

Space History: The Great Moon Hoax 4Almost 40 years after the event, there are those who still believe that the Apollo Moon landings were allfaked. DAVID A HARDY examines the photographic evidence.

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The Second Year

Well, here we are into the second year of Voyage magazine. It’samazing how time flies; even though Voyage only comes outthree times a year, there still never seems to be enough time toget it all done. Maybe I’ll examine Mat Irvine’s article on timetravel on page 38 for a few clues!

With this second year of Voyage, we’ve decided not to theme theissues any more. Instead, we have a good mixture of articles that we hope willappeal to everyone. We’d still like to hear from anyone who would like to contribute,so as well as entering the competitions, why not drop us a line or an email aboutplaces you’ve been, or science projects you’ve enjoyed, as well as any articles you’dlike to write?

We’d also like to hear from you if you’ve tried any of the experiments we’ve featuredfrom Mr Pilbeam, or you’ve taking to standing out in your garden looking up at thestars as a result of reading our astronomy feature.

See you at the British Festival of Space.

Mike ShaylerEditor

COMPETITION ENTRIESSend your answers for all competitions to:

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THE OBSERVATORY SCIENCE CENTREIN ASSOCIATION WITH PULSAR OPTICAL

PRESENT

The Herstmonceux science centreAstronomy festival 2005

THE BIGGEST ASTRONOMY WEEKEND IN THE UK!

September 9th, 10th & 11thMain event days – 10th & 11th

Includes Viewing through the historic telescopes on Friday & Saturdayevening (weather permitting), daily programme of lectures, tours

around the telescopes, solar telescope, trade stalls & over 90 hands-on science exhibits.

Book 3 nights camping under the Backdrop of the telescope domes Atthe UK’s home of astronomy!

All this plus a Beer tent & refreshments, an opportunity to visit thegrounds of Herstmonceux castle, raffle & much more!

SUPPORTING THE FESTIVAL WILL HELP MAINTAIN THETELESCOPES AND KEEP OUR HERITAGE ALIVE.

Limited camping available (£30 for 3 nights, max 4 people per site) -book early!

Register for the full event (Friday evening – Sunday 6pm) and receive afree souvenir badge, lanyard,

ticket to visit the grounds of the castle & entry into the centre, daytickets also available

Bookings now being taken.

For further information and prices contact the Science Centre (detailsbelow)

or Pulsar Optical 01354 741443

The Observatory Science Centre Herstmonceux, Hailsham, EastSussex. BN27 1RN

Phone: 01323 831972 Fax: 01323 832741Email@ info@the-observatory.org Web: www.the-observatory.org

Registered charity number 298542

Pulsar OpticalTelescopes and Observatories

SPACE HARDWARE

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Manned SpacecraftAPOLLO COMMAND & SERVICE MODULE →→→→→Perhaps the most famous of all spacecraft, the ApolloCommand Module carried teams of three astronauts to thevicinity of the Moon, and brought them back home toEarth after the landings. This was also the vehicle used bythe Americans for the joint mission with the Soviet Unionin 1975, called Apollo-Soyuz, and they also used it to carrycrews of three to their space station, Skylab, in 1973. AnApollo Command Module was the first vehicle to carrypeople into orbit anywhere other than round the Earth,and of the giant Saturn V structure that blasted the Apollomissions into space, only this tiny capsule returned toEarth. This meant that it had to be aerodynamic enough tosit at the top of the rocket at launch, manoeuvrableenough to get the crew to the Moon and return them,spacious enough for the three men to live and eat aboardfor several days, and strong enough to resist the buffetingand heat of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere at the end ofthe mission.

←←←←← APOLLO LUNAR MODULEThe other half of the Apollo spacecraft that went to theMoon was the vehicle that actually landed on thesurface. This fragile, spidery-like vehicle did not haveto be aerodynamic or strong, as it was never designedto work in an atmosphere or in strong gravity. It carriedtwo of the three crew down to the surface of the Moon,but perhaps it’s greatest moment came when it had tobe used as a lifeboat to save the crew of Apollo 13when the Service Module was badly damaged by anexplosion. Never designed to carry three people, letalone for any length of time, the vehicle and theingenuity of the crew and ground staff kept the Apollo13 astronauts alive all the way to the Moon, around itand back to Earth.

GEMINI →→→→→Before the Apollo missions went to the Moon, theAmericans had to learn all the techniques for how tocomplete the journey. The vehicle they used was thistwo-man capsule called Gemini. In the space of just tenmanned and two unmanned missions, the Americanshad to learn how to do spacewalks from theirspacecraft, get two vehicles to meet up and jointogether in space (called rendezvous and docking),conduct experiments in space, learn how to navigate,control the re-entry to achieve a precise landing, andlive in space for longer than it would take to complete aMoon mission. The longest Gemini flight was 14 days,and it could not exactly be described as pleasant. Onecomment was that it was like spending two weekscooped up in the front seats of a Volkswagon Beetle.The capsule was very small, with two astronauts onboard and very little room to manoeuvre. Yet it provedto be a very successful programme, because without it,American astronauts would never have been able to goto the Moon before President Kennedy’s deadline of1969.

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SPACE HARDWARE

←←←←← SOYUZThe most successful, versatile and long-lived mannedspacecraft is this Russian Soyuz capsule. For over 40years, it has been the main vehicle used by the Soviets/Russians to send people into space. It has sent all theircrews to the series of Russian space stations, sent theRussian half of the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission into orbitand is currently used to send crews up to the InternationalSpace Station. Without Soyuz, the ISS may well have hadto be abandoned after the loss of the Columbia Shuttle in2003, because there was no other vehicle available. ASoyuz is always docked to the ISS as an emergency returnvehicle, and an unmanned version of the craft, calledProgress, is used to take fresh supplies up to the crewsliving on the station. The Soyuz is due to be retired soonand replaced by another vehicle, but its replacement willbe hard pushed to be as well used, or as reliable.

SPACE SHUTTLE →→→→→Ask most people to name a spacecraft and the chancesare they’ll come up with the Space Shuttle. Since its firstlaunch in April 1981, the Shuttle has carried hundreds ofpeople and tons of cargo and experiments into space onover 100 missions. It has not been without problems,especially the loss of two of the fleet, Challenger in 1986and Columbia in 2003, together with the crews, but theSpace Shuttle has supported a vast array of experimentsin Earth orbit and a huge amount of science data hasbeen collected. Shuttle crews have also been able toretrieve and return satellites and experiments back toEarth, and carry out on-orbit repairs to importantsatellites like the Hubble Space Telescope, all savingtremendous financial expenditure from beingabandoned. It has also carried crews, equipment,experiments and parts to build and maintain theInternational Space Station. After the loss of Columbia,the decision was taken to retire the Shuttle from serviceonce it has helped to complete the construction of ISS.The Shuttle is due to fly again this summer and if it issafe and successful, the programme of constructing ISSwill resume. It is expected to last until 2010, and theremaining Shuttles, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavourwill be retired at the end of a programme that will havelasted almost 30 years.

←←←←← X-15 ROCKET PLANENot quite a spacecraft, but the X-15 rocketplane programme that ran from 1959 to 1968contributed to all the early American spaceflight programmes, as well as to the Shuttle.The X-15 set many aircraft records that it stillholds today, and took several of its pilots to thefringes of space in Earth’s upper atmosphere.The X-15 set a speed record of Mach 6.7 inOctober 1967 and an altitude record of 67 miles(108 km) in 1963. It also provided enormousamounts of data on hypersonic air flow,aerodynamic heating, control and stability athypersonic speeds, reaction controls for flightabove the atmosphere, piloting techniques forre-entry and many other aspects of flight.

SPACE HARDWARE

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Unmanned ProbesPIONEER →→→→→The Pioneer probes 10 and 11 were the first vehiclessent from Earth into the outer solar system and beyond.Pioneer 10 was launched in March 1972 and reachedJupiter in December 1973, the first spacecraft to fly pastthe big planet. After sending back data about Jupiter,Pioneer 10 continued on its way out of the solar system,passing the orbit of Pluto in June 1983. It is unique inthat it is heading into the outer galaxy as opposed totowards the centre (like Pioneer 11 and the two Voyagerprobes). It is heading in the general direction of a starcalled Aldebaran, but since that is about 68 light yearsaway, it will take about 2 million years to get there.Pioneer 11 was the first to fly past Saturn, in 1979, and isnow heading in the general direction of Sagittarius. Bothprobes carry a small gold plaque showing man andwoman and the position of our planet in the galaxy, incase they are ever found by intelligent life out among thestars. NASA was still in contact with Pioneer 11 until1995 and Pioneer 10 until early 2003.

←←←←← VOYAGERThe two Voyager probes were launched in 1977 andgave us even better data from Jupiter and Saturn thanthe Pioneers had. Voyager 1 discovered two new moonsat Jupiter and three at Saturn, as well as detailingSaturn’s rings and examining the atmosphere of it’smoon, Titan. Going to Titan meant that Voyager 1 couldnot go on to Uranus and Neptune, but Voyager 2successfully visited both of these planets making evenmore discoveries. Amazingly, both spacecraft are stillfunctioning and returning data more than 10,000 daysafter their launches, and in February 1998, Voyager 1became the furthest human made object from the Sun,passing the distance of Pioneer 10 because of its fastertrajectory.

VENERA →→→→→Despite having always been associated with the colour red, the SovietUnion’s space programme had very little luck with Red Planet Mars. It’sgreatest planetary successes came with the Venera series to Venus,although several early attempts failed because of faulty launch vehiclesor communications problems. The first success was with Venera 4(pictured) in 1967, which became the first successul Soviet planetarymission and the first spacecraft to penetrate the Venusian atmosphere.Since then, the Venera series has gone on to great success. Venera 7became the first human-made object to return data after landing onanother planet; Venera 8 managed to send back data for about 50minutes until the harsh surface conditions caused it to fail, while Venera9 and 10 transmitted the first surface pictures. They were two-partspacecraft, with an orbiting section and a lander, so that data could berelayed back to Earth from above the atmosphere of Venus. Venera 13and 14 launched in 1981 were much more sophisticated. Both werepacked with experiments and in March 1982, Venera 13 took the firstcolour images of the planet’s surface and also conducted the first soilsample analysis. The series ended in 1983 with Venera 15 and 16, whichwere dfferent in that they did not land on the surface. Instead, bothstayed in orbit around Venus and completed a programme of radarmapping of the surface, showing impact craters, hills, ridges and othermajor surface features.

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SPACE HARDWARE

←←←←← MARINER 9Success at Mars has been mainly in thehands of American missions. The Vikingmissions (see Re-Entry on page 44) were thefirst to successfully land on the surface, butthey would not have succeeded without theMariner 9 spacecraft. The Mariner seriesperformed the first successful fly-by of bothVenus (2) and Mars (4, 6 and 7), but Mariner 9was the first to successfully orbit the planet(in 1971) and send back maps of the surface.It actually had to do the work of two probes,as its sister, Mariner 8, failed during launch,so Mariner 9 took on part of its mappingprogramme. At first, Mariner 9 was unable tophotograph much because the whole planetwas covered by a dust storm that lasted threemonths. Once the dust had settled, Mariner 9took the first images of the huge volcanoes,the long series of canyons, the polar ice capsand both the moons, Phobos and Deimos

GIOTTO →→→→→The first European deep space probe was alsothe first to have a close encounter with a comet,when it flew to within 605 km of Halley’s Cometin March 1986. It was launched from Kourou(see page 24) in July 1985. The probe carried arange of instruments to measure andphotograph the comet, but many of them did notcomplete their programme or were damaged bythe close encounter. As Giotto flew near to thecomet, it began to be hit by more and more dustparticles (some 12,000 in all), until, just a fewseconds before closest approach, it was struckby something large enough to knock it off itsaxis and into a tumble. While some of thesensors survived, there was damage to some ofthe experiments and the camera. After thisencounter, Giotto flew by Earth in 1990,becoming the first spacecraft to encounter Earthfrom deep space.

←←←←← CASSINISome twenty-four years after Voyager passedby the ringed planet, the Cassini spacecraftbecame the first to enter orbit around Saturn. Itcarried the Huygens probe that was designedto land on the moon Titan (which it did inJanuary 2005, becoming the furthest humanmade object to land on another planet ormoon) and is currently circling the planetgathering data. Cassini has provided the firstdetailed images of many of the moons ofSaturn, including Phoebe, Titan, Iapetus andEnceladus, and is set to continue encounteringthem until at least well into 2008, flying asclose as 500 km away or less in many cases.

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Climate Changeby Johnathan Levy, FBIS

The Earth seems pretty big when youwalk about on it, but from space itcan appear small and fragile. Yet thevantage point of Earth orbit helps usmonitor small changes that can havea big impact on the planet. Thisarticle investigates what satellitesare discovering about our climateand the factors that influencechange.

Our planet is unique in the SolarSystem. We orbit around the Sun at adistance where our small yellow star’senergy creates conditions on Earthwhere water can exist in all three states:solid, liquid and gas, simultaneously.The energy released and absorbed as itchanges from one state to the other ispart of the delicate process that drivesthe Earth’s climate and weatherpatterns, fuelled by the Sun’s rays.

Other gases in the atmosphere alsoinfluence climate and temperature,including carbon dioxide (CO2), oxygen(O2) and another version of oxygencalled ozone (O3). Nitrogen is the mostabundant gas, but has a much smallerrole to play. There are also varioussulphur oxides – occurring naturallythrough volcanic activity, or as apollutant from chemical manufacturingprocesses or the burning of fossil fuelslike coal.

Carbon dioxide is also produced byburning fossil fuels and some gases arereleased which attack others in theatmosphere, such aschlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, which wereused as propellants in aerosol cans andin refrigeration units). These can rise upinto the atmosphere and influence thebreakdown of the ozone layer.

The ozone layer is at an altitude of 20-30 kilometres and this natural form of

oxygen absorbs the Sun’s harmful ultra-violet radiation – splitting into O2 andfree oxygen, releasing heat as it doesso. This ‘good’ ozone protects us fromsunburn, skin cancer and eye problems.

On the other hand, under the influenceof sunlight, nitrogen oxides andhydrocarbons - toxic ozone - is createdon Earth’s surface. This ‘bad’ ozone,part of air pollution or smog, may posea particular health threat to those whoalready suffer from respiratoryproblems.

So our atmosphere is a thick ocean ofgases, the majority natural, but withsome significant ‘pollution’ frommanmade activity. As it ripples acrossour planet’s surface, pressure andtemperature differences evaporate andcondense water; freeze it and thaw it;create currents of wind and can disturbsea levels.

As the seasons ebb and flow, lifecycles respond to the changing annualconditions and the extremes ofmonsoons and drought, scorchingheat and freezing cold. Plants have arelationship with our atmosphere –

In 1985, a British scientist working in Antarctica discovered a 40% loss in the ozone layer over thecontinent. When NASA researchers reviewed their data, they confirmed the ozone loss. In the 1990sa worldwide ban was made on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a chemical used for refrigeration andother industrial uses. In this image, the blue/purple areas show low ozone. Although ozone isconsidered a pollutant in the troposphere (the atmospheric layer that contains the air we breathe), inhigher altitudes, notably in the stratosphere, ozone is considered vital. Stratospheric ozone blocksharmful ultraviolet radiation produced by the Sun. Scientists worry that the large ozone hole openingover the poles generally depletes ozone levels around the globe, which could cause a health risk toanimals and plants.

This illustration of Earth’s sea surface temperature was obtained from two weeks of infraredobservations. Temperatures are colour coded from red (warmest) through orange, yellow, green,and blue (coolest). Temperature patterns seen in this image are the result of many influences,including the circulation of the ocean, surface winds, and solar heating. Credit: DIGITAL/NASA

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FEATURE

they are part of an ecosystem: rainwashes nutrients and mineralsthrough the soil towards their roots,while above ground their leavesabsorb energy from sunlight,processing carbon dioxide to producefood by photosynthesis. (That’s whythe rapid loss of huge areas of rainforest is a concern, as nature’scapacity to take carbon dioxide out ofthe atmosphere is reduced.)

The atmosphere was much more toxicas the Earth formed billions of yearsago, but as the Earth cooled andvolcanic activity shaped the solidcontours of the surface, many of theelements and molecules that make upour atmosphere today were releasedfrom deep inside the planet. And as lifeevolved on the surface, rich vegetationthrived on the gases present andcontributed towards the higherproportions of oxygen now in theatmosphere.

The Big PictureLife teemed in theseas andeventuallymigrated to dryland as creaturesand planet evolvedtogether. In thescale of things,mankind is arelative newcomer,so can we really bemaking such animpact on ourplanet’s climate?

Someone oncesaid, ‘There’s nosuch thing as badweather, just thewrong clothes,’ soare we just beingselfish here? Isman justexperiencing‘inconvent’ naturalshifts that havecreated ice agesand desertsthroughout Earth’shistory? That’swhat we need to

find out: Is the planet warming orcooling, and are we messing it up?

So we return to the cold vacuum ofspace and our silent viewing platform inthe heavens – where we can not onlystudy what’s happening below on ourown planet, but also look at outneighbours Venus and Mars – to see ifthere are any lessons to be learnedthere.

Another vital piece of the jigsaw isreliable historical data. Althoughobservations and records have beenmade on Earth for a few hundred years,it is only within the last 50 years thatreliable data has been collected to giveus a base-line to monitor change, andthat’s a pretty short timescale given theage of our planet.

But scientists do have access to somevery accurate data for a much longertime period; hidden underground are

layers of history and fossils that give usa pretty good indication of the climate,temperatures and gases that existedover millions of years. So we are able tocombine archaeological and geologicaldata with observations from space toget a pretty accurate picture of what isreally happening to our climate.

Readings taken from ice cores andfossil records show that two of the mostabundant greenhouse gases – carbondioxide and methane (released mainlyby decomposing organic material) – areat their highest levels for 420,000 years.They are involved in something calledthe greenhouse effect: like panes ofglass in a greenhouse they allow theSun’s rays to reach Earth but preventthe heat they generate from escaping.

The greenhouse effect is actuallyneeded to prevent the Earth getting toocold. If all the heat escaped into spacethe Earth’s average surfacetemperature would be a chilly -18°C,rather than the current 15°C, so weneed just the right amount of cloud andgreenhouse gases in the atmosphere toachieve a balance between theradiation energy received and the heatenergy lost.

Weather and other Earth observingsatellites can gather a wide range ofdata of various factors that influenceclimate change. All matter emitsmicrowave radiation that varies with itstemperature and microwave sensors onsatellites can take more than 60,000temperature measurements of oxygenin the atmosphere, from the surface toan altitude of about 10 km.

Interestingly, while surfacetemperatures have been rising, therehas been a strong cooling trend overthe last 20 years that has beenattributed to ozone depletion in thelower stratosphere. Ozone is also agreenhouse gas, as is water vapourwhich traps huge amounts of escapingheat in cloud cover.

Microwave measurements fromsatellites are also being used to

Satellite data and images like this of Earth give scientists a betterunderstanding of our planet’s interrelated systems and climate. Fourdifferent satellites contributed to the making of this image. SeaWiFSprovided the land image layer, a true color composite of land vegetationfor cloud-free conditions from 18 Sep to 3 Oct 1997. Each red dot overSouth America and Africa represents a fire detected by the AdvancedVery High Resolution Radiometer. The oceanic aerosol layer is based onNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data and iscaused by biomass burning and windblown dust over Africa. The cloudlayer is a composite of infrared images from four geostationary weathersatellites: NOAA’s GOES 8 and 9, the European Space Agency’sMETEOSAT, and Japan’s GMS 5. DIGITAL/NASA

FEATURE

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measure rainfall, because oceanicrainfall is difficult to measure byconventional methods (75% of theEarth’s surface is covered by water).This will help us to better understandhow the atmosphere adjusts to climatechanges, such as increasing levels ofgreenhouse gases.

Satellites have measured otherevidence of climate change, such as thepresence of ice and its reduction orgrowth at the poles and in glaciers. Themelting of ice through global warming isexpected to result in rising sea levelsand combine with other changes toaffect existing currents of warmer andcooler water.

Sea levels have been measured bysatellite altimeters since 1993, whichshow they have risen by approximately3.1 centimetres per decade. Althoughthis is a small change, the rate ofincrease is twice as large as in the lastcentury. Researchers agree thatmonitoring ice sheets and sea level isnecessary to ensure the system is inbalance.

However, scientists from the US spaceagency NASA, working with otherresearchers, have used data fromsatellites, ocean buoys and computermodels to study the Earth’s oceans anddiscovered that more energy is being

absorbed from the Sun than is emittedback to space, throwing the Earth’senergy ‘out of balance’ and warming theglobe.

The study reveals that Earth’s energyimbalance is large by standards of theplanet’s history. The imbalance is 0.85watts per meter squared. That willcause an additional warming of 0.6°C.To understand the difference, think of aone-watt light bulb shining over an areaof one square metre.

That doesn’t seem like much, until youadd up thenumber ofsquaremetresaround theworld tocreate a bigeffect.

However, thestudysuggests theenergybalance,which isaffected byincreasingatmosphericpollution,especially

carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, andblack carbon particles, will eventually berestored, because as the Earth warms itemits more heat. But it takes the oceanlonger to warm than the land, so the lagin the ocean’s response means there isan additional global warming of about0.6°C still to come, even if there is nofurther increase of human-made gasesin the air over the next century.

The whole issue of climate change iscomplex, because there are so manyfactors at work. As a result, monitoringour planet’s atmosphere has becomean international priority. As successiveworld summits have stressed, our futureon Earth could depend on safeguardingour environment. Scientists and spaceagencies around the world are nowinvolved in research, monitoring andfuelling the global debate.

For example, the European SpaceAgency’s Earth observation satelliteEnvisat has an instrument that monitorsozone and other trace gases. Thecoverage maps produced show thegreat variability of the ozone layer andprecisely tracks the evolution of theozone hole above the South Pole.

Each year the ‘hole’ expands overAntarctica, sometimes reachingpopulated areas of South America and

With the coming of spring,the ice on Canada’s HudsonBay has begun to break up.Large chunks of ice floatnear the eastern shore ofthe bay, while to the west,the center of the bayremains frozen. All over theworld, the timing of thespring thaw in high northernlatitudes has attracted theattention of scientistsmonitoring climate change.In the Hudson Bay itself, a2004 study in the journalArctic reported that between1971 and 2003, the length ofthe ice-free season in thesouth-western part of theHudson Bay — always thelast area to thaw — hadincreased by about 3 days.Across the entire Arctic, seaice has reached record lows.

Credit: NASA imagecourtesy Jeff Schmaltz

MODIS Rapid ResponseTeam, NASA-GSFC

Launched in March 2002, ESA’s Envisat satellite is an extremely powerful meansof monitoring the state of our world and the impact of human activities upon it.Envisat carries ten sophisticated optical and radar instruments to observe andmonitor the Earth’s atmosphere, land, oceans and ice caps. Credit ESA

Hudson Bay

Ungava Peninsula

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FEATURE

This natural colour image shows the upper atmosphere of Titan(inset), an active place where methane molecules are beingbroken apart by solar ultraviolet light and the by-productscombine to form compounds like ethane and acetylene. The hazescatters blue and ultraviolet wavelengths of light, making itscomplex layered structure more easily visible at the shorterwavelengths used in this image. Lower down in the atmosphere,the haze turns into a smog of complex organic molecules. Thisthick, orange-coloured haze absorbs visible sunlight, allowingonly perhaps 10% of the light to reach the surface. The thick hazeis also inefficient at holding in and then re-radiating infrared(thermal) energy back down to the surface. So, even though Titanhas a thicker atmosphere than Earth, the thick global hazecauses the greenhouse effect to be weaker than it is on Earth.

volcanic activity. Overtime, Mars has developeda thin atmosphere with allthe water frozen in theground; even though it iscomposed of carbondioxide the atmosphere isnot dense enough tocreate a substantialgreenhouse effect.

However, images of Marsand data sent from recentspacecraft to land on theplanet and explore it,suggest that water didonce flow on Mars –possibly when the planetwas warmer – with higherlevels of volcanic activity.But as the planet cooledinternally, there was notsufficient solar radiation toprevent temperaturesfalling so that carbondioxide and water froze outof the atmosphere into thesurface.

Even further out in theSolar System, the moons

of the large planets Jupiter and Saturnoffer some interesting observations.

For example, Titan’s atmosphericwinds, temperature and mixing havebeen revealed by new observationsfrom the Cassini spacecraft. The thickatmosphere of this giant Saturn moon isrich in organic compounds, which maybe similar to that which occurred onEarth before the emergence of life.

Heavy organic molecules form naturallyin Titan’s atmosphere, blanketing themoon with an orange haze. Titan’satmosphere consists of about 98percent nitrogen with most of theremainder being methane. Like Earth,Titan’s axis of rotation is tilted, so itspoles also experience a long nightduring winter. Observations indicate thatstrong winds circulating around Titan’snorth pole isolate the atmosphere thereduring the polar night.

On Earth, the south polar atmosphere isisolated for months during the longAntarctic winter allowing the formationof polar stratospheric clouds. Normally

inert chlorine compounds (such aschlorine nitrate) undergo chemicalreactions on the cloud crystals that freemolecular chlorine, so that in the spring,sunlight decomposes the molecularchlorine, leading to the famous annualAntarctic ‘ozone hole’.

So our neighbours in space andobservations from scientific satellites inorbits high above the Earth are givingus great insights into climate change.To discover more and to keep informedof the latest discoveries, the variousspace agencies and linked universityweb sites offer a good source ofaccurate independent information.

Global warming is an emotive subject,so you have to be careful whensearching the web for information, asvarious organisations have vestedinterests in promoting one side of theargument or the other. However, thefollowing sites were used as sources forthis article and also offer resources forfurther study:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/www.eci.ox.ac.uk/www.esa.int/esaCP/Protecting.htmlwww.ghcc.msfc.nasa.govwww.globe.govwww.nasa.govwww.nasa.gov/goddardwww.nsstc.uah.edu/essc/

exposing them to ultraviolet raysnormally absorbed by ozone. Scientistshave new tools to study this annualphenomenon, and the human-producedcompounds that contribute to ozonebreakdown are decreasing.

Space scientists are not just studyingthe Earth’s weather, but are alsolooking towards our planetaryneighbours for clues about climatechange. Venus is our closest neighbour.It is closer to the Sun and has anatmosphere composed almost entirely(96%) of carbon dioxide, creating asignificant greenhouse effect whichsees the temperature soar to over450°C.

This heat bakes the water out of theground and prevents the special kind ofhydrated minerals which allow for platetectonics on Earth. On the other handMars, which is further from the Sun thanthe Earth, appears to be too cold forliquid water, so hydrated minerals areprevented from forming. Gases becometrapped in the ground and are notrecycled to the atmosphere through

Jonathan Levy (47) has been a fellowof the British Interplanetary Society forover 20 years. As a freelance writer,producer and broadcaster, hespecialised in aerospace, science andtechnology – from the closing years ofApollo to the Space Shuttle andbeyond. After an extensive perioddeveloping digital media strategies forclients in the United States andEurope, herecently returned to the UKto establish a strategiccommunications consultancy. He is acontributing editor to specialistpublications and journals and is aregular conference speaker and chairon a wide range of technology issues.

PUZZLE PAGE

12

Can you complete the grid using the names, dates and facts below? Be careful, as two of the events happened in thesame year. Answers on pages 42/43

WHO DID WHAT?

WHO DID WHAT WHEN

William Herschel

Identified Comet (now known by his name)

1930

Developed the Telescope

1801

Giuseppe Piazzi

FIT THESE CLUES INTO THE COLUMNS (Note: These clues are not in order)

WHO DID WHAT WHENEdmund Halley Discovered Planet Pluto 1609Johann Bode Discovered Planet Uranus 1705Galileo Galilei Published first atlas of stars visible to the naked eye 1781Clyde Tombaugh Identified the first asteroid (which he named Ceres) 1801

Anagram Prose

Can you make sense of the passagebelow by deciphering the anagrams

in capital letters?

The VINEUSER is a CLOD andKARD place, but from the safety ofthe TOCKER it all looks beautiful.The HEART appears LUBE fromSCAPE and RAMS appears red.The GRINS around RATSUN andtails of COSTME are thought to be

made up of CORK and STUD.

Phrase DropAll the letters in this puzzle have fallen out of the grid. They’re in the right

columns but they’ve got mixed up. Can you sort them out to reveal a famousspace phrase?

N A AH R G A D R

T M A L K S N NS L E A P I N O NF M E N A I M T T EO O A T L S F O E PPuzzle by Miranda Line

Puzzle by Miranda Line

Puzzle byVoyagemagazine

’

;

13

CAPTION COMPETITION

Tell us what you think theastronaut and technicians are

thinking or saying. You canhave more than one of them

speaking but please keep youranswers short if you can —and nothing rude please!

In this photo are three Russiantechnicians and NASA

astronaut Edward M. Fincke

The best answers will beprinted in the next issue and

the one we consider thefunniest will win.

THE PRIZEWe have a copy of the book International Space Station for the winner

The runner up will receive a copy of the next issue of Voyage.Please mark your entry Caption Competition 4 and send to the address on page 2

LAST ISSUE

Congratulations to Mike Wilson ofYorkshire, who wins four copies of

the Voyager Card Game for:

“Hey Pedro, you’ve mixed up theorange juice with the sample bags

again!”

Runner up:“It’s a book; two words; first word...”

Ray Evans, Northants

COLLECTING

14

SPACE STAMPSby Mike Wilson

Tucked away in my study is a book thathas been with me since the early 70s.Occasionally I pore over the pages,remembering those early days of spaceexploration. I’m old enough to have readnew books about proposed Moonrockets, and to have seen pictures ofCol. John Paul Stapp on his rocket sledproving that man could survive huge G-forces. I can still visualise and hear the

Even if they do go during a burst ofspring cleaning, the first book Imentioned will stay. It’s my space stampalbum. In those pages, the faces of TheRight Stuff hold my attention with theirsteady gaze. Gagarin, in his leatherflying helmet, peers from the sheet ashe adorns a blue 1.35 lei Romanianstamp.

Ten stamps from Romania depict fourAmericans: Glenn, Carpenter, Schirraand Cooper; and six Russians: Gagarin,

Footballers and film stars are higher inour estimation now.

Recent space successes are marginallymore valuable. A beautiful cover for theSTS-8 1983 Challenger Shuttle Flight isjust over £5.00. There is a foldoutbooklet of six pages with photographs ofthe shuttle included.

A first day cover featuring John Glenn inhis Mercury capsule from 1962 waspriced at £3.75 in an up-to-dateGibbons stamp catalogue, while a FDCfor the 20th anniversary of the MoonLanding was just 53p.

In 1981, the US published a stampcelebrating Space Achievements. An 18cent Shuttle stamped envelope, with a22ct gold replica of the stamp, waspriced at only £3.35.

Some US stamps are really cheap. Tenpence will buy a copy of John Glennand Mercury; the Apollo 8 Moon Flight;Skylab in orbit; and Unmanned Pioneerto Jupiter. Ten pence! These arerecords of mankind’s achievements andanyone interested in space, whetherright on our doorstep between Earthand the Moon, or the vast reachesbetween the stars, can find stamps forstimulation.

silence during the broadcast of theMoon landing, watching those greyishshadows move on a black and white TVscreen until Neil Armstrong said the firstwords from another world.

In the deep recesses of a cupboardlingers a box of newspapers; nearlyevery English newspaper and magazinefrom July 1969 declaring ‘Man on theMoon.’ It’s history, the story ofmankind’s worthwhile endeavour toreach the stars. How can I condemnthese papers to the skip?

One of the first stamps to feature Yuri Gagarin.

First Day Covers for Apollo 8and Apollo 11

President John F. Kennedy features on thisYemeni stamp

Titov, Nikolayev, Bykovsky, Tereshkovaand Popovich. It’s a photo gallery ofthose first intrepid astronauts andcosmonauts, who took mankind intospace.

Two US first day coverscelebrate Apollo 8, ‘USFirst Manned LunarOrbital Flight,’ and Apollo11, ‘Commemorating FirstMen on the Moon, July20, 1969.’

They are handsomeenvelopes with excellentillustrations of theastronauts, date stampedappropriately, withbeautiful full-colourstamps. But, their value?Negligible. The Apollo 11envelope was availablerecently on Ebay at £1.07.

Although my personal collection is stuckway back in the 70s, stamps are stillissued for all manner of space themes. Ihave seen stamps depicting the orbitsbetween Earth and the Moon for Apollo,and other orbits for interplanetarymissions.

There are stamps showing spacecraftfrom Sputnik and Telstar to the latestShuttle missions. Some stamps showfictitious space stations in Earth orbit,

Project Mercury on a 4 cent US stamp

15

COLLECTING

while others show Earth from space andstill others illustrate man in space. EdWhite features on many US stamps onthis theme, while Alexei Leonovrepresents the USSR.

The Russian ventures into space seemto be celebrated more than those by theUS. This is probably because countriesfrom Eastern Europe, and others suchas Mongola and Cuba, boosted theireconomies by publishing hosts ofstamps dealing with space flight.

On the single page in my album forAmerican stamps, there is one forCommunications in Peace, featuring theEcho 1 satellite; a second for ‘US Manin Space: Project Mercury’; a thirdshowing an astronaut ‘space-walking’against a deep blue sky; while the lastshows ‘First Man on the Moon.’ Each ofthese stamps would cost only pence tostart a collection of US space stamps.

Stamps also feature thinkers andscientists who prepared the way for theengineers who built the spacecraft.There is a detailed illustration of Luna

Sputnik, the satellite that stunned the world,ushered in the era of space flight on 4 October1957

John Glenn is featured on this Hungarianstamp

This is Valentina Tereshkova, the first womanin space, aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963

This stamp was printed in silver to celebrateRussian cosmic flights. Gibbons’ price in theircatalogue is £22.00

A lovely shot of the Earth featured on a 1969Russian stamp.

Alexei Leonov takes a spacewalk on 18 March1965

A First Day Cover for the launching of an earlyRussian spacecraft

10 on a Russian six kopek stamp,Telstar-1 on a Mongolian stamp, Venus3 from Romania, and Gemini 6 andGemini 7 from Bulgaria and Dubai.

French efforts in space are celebratedwith two stamps showing their firstsatellite, A1. As for any Britishcontribution to space, well I have nostamps at all.

A wide variety of stamps can be foundon Ebay. Like everything else in thismodern world, care needs to beexercised when dealing on Ebay, butmany people have had hundreds oftransactions without difficulty.

Copies of Gibbons catalogues canusually be found in the referencedepartment of local libraries.The great achievements of earlyspaceflight are criminally undervalued intoday’s celebrity-obsessed world, but ifplans to go back to the Moon and on to

Mars come to fruition, those stamps youcollect today for a few pence maysuddenly become highly valuable again.

Voyage PRIZE COMPETITION

16

WIN AN

This is a 1960s artist’simpression of how NASA sawtheir space shuttle and space

station programmes in thefuture. We all know that ISS

stands for International SpaceStation, but can you work out

the meanings of thefollowing?

1. What does NASA standfor?a) North Atlantic Space

Agencyb) National Aeronautics &

Space Administrationc) North American Space

Association

2. What does EVA stand for?a) Extended Vehicle

Assemblyb) European Venus

Authorityc) Extra Vehicular Activity

3) What does KSC stand for?a) Kentucky Smoked

Chickenb) Kennedy Space Centerc) Keep Space Clean

4. What does STS stand for?a) Space Transportation

Systemb) Shuttle Taxi Servicec) Shuttle To Station

Please mark your entry ESA ISSCompetition and send or emailit to the address on page 2

ISSUE 3 COMPETITION

The correct answers for issue3 were:1. a. 19722. c. Eagle3. a. Sea of Tranquillity

And the winner, who willreceive a great die cast space

shuttle model is:Johnathan Davis of Sussex

17

ESA ISS EDUCATIONAL KIT

MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 3

18

The outstanding success of thetwin Mars probes ‘Spirit’ and‘Opportunity’ is a monument tothe engineers who designed andbuilt them.

Remember, science rides on theback of engineering – without thenuts and bolts you don’t get thescientific results. However, bothprobes were highly complex andexpensive to build. The fact that theylasted so long helped to bring downthe cost, but they were still notcheap. There is also the problemthat they relied on mechanicalsystems – wheels and motors – toget around. This limited the terrainthey could explore, and it meant thatthey were susceptible to mechanicalwear and tear.

Power Source

Another difficulty is power supply.The rovers had to take their powersupply with them. It would be nice ifwe could exploit a Martian powersource instead. Fortunately we can:Mars has winds which we canharness. Being wind-driven wouldmean that the rover can travel as faras the winds will take it, and itdoesn’t run out of power. NASA iscurrently examining ideas for thistype of rover; unsurprisingly, it’s

Tumbleweed

called “Tumbleweed”. For moreinformation, see

centauri.larc.nasa.gov/tumbleweed.

Tumbleweed

The tumbleweed, or ‘RussianThistle’, is in fact the dead upperportion of the plant, which carries theseeds. As it blows around thedesert, the seeds are scattered overa wide area. In this article, I’m goingto suggest ways in which you canmake a wind-driven (not wind-powered) tumbleweed rover to takesamples from your schoolplayground or garden, and growthem to see what’s out there.

By the way, if you want to order yourown tumbleweed (I did) here’s the

site:

http://www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com

DESIGNING THE ROVER

The first thing to do is research.Watch how some things are blownaround in the wind more easily thanothers – is it their shape that’simportant, their mass, or whatthey’re made of? Find out as muchas you can about how plants spreadtheir seeds around using the wind. Agood site to study these methods is:

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plfeb99.htm#misc

This site gives descriptions of thedifferent plants, and has very clear

Tumbleweed, or ‘Russian Thistle’

The seeds of aDandelion ‘Clock’

(photo © W.P.Armstrong 2000)

19

MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 3Mars Roverphotos to help your investigations.The site is American, so some of theplants won’t be native here, but youcan do research into UK plantswhich work in the same way. Otherthings you could look at are man-made items such as kites, sailingships and windmills. Having settledon some designs, you’ll need toconsider what you’re going to use forthe Martian wind, as this willdetermine your design and choice ofmaterials. If you’re testing your roveroutside, then all you need is a goodwindy day, and a suitable area suchas a playground, a garden path orpatio.

Please note: Testing and runningyour rover on public roads andpavements can be hazardous andwe do not recommend doing so.

Airflow

If you’re working indoors, then ahair-drier on a cool/cold settingseems an obvious choice, but it isn’tvery powerful; although you may beable to increase the strength of theairflow from a hairdryer by makingthe nozzle narrower, using a conicaltube made from card. Alternatively, ablower for one of those portable

bubble mats for baths can also beused, as these give a strongerairflow. A good household fan canalso be pressed into service.

A Control Model

It’s a good idea to have a referencestandard against which to calibrateyour Tumbleweed’s performance. Agood model would be a beach ball orlightweight ball of a similar size toyour Tumbleweed. Using yourchosen blower, under the sameconditions as your final tests, seehow far the ball moves when blown.

Make a note of the distances, andthen do the same test with yourTumbleweed. Note the difference inperformance, and attempt to explainthe reasons. For some official ideason Tumbleweed concepts, go to thissite:

http://centauri.larc.nasa.gov/tumbleweed/twconcepts.html

My own designs are based on their‘Tumblecup’ and ‘Dandelion’ ideas.The Tumblecup is made from anordinary lightweight plastic ball withpolystyrene cups glued all over it[using rubber solution cement].

The Dandelion is made with a largepolystyrene sphere [available fromcraft shops], into which are stuckBBQ skewers. Each skewer istopped with a small sphere, and polycups cut in half act as “sails”. TheDandelion rolls better, and is good atclimbing obstacles, but theTumblecup seems to get startedquicker than the Dandelion.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

When designing your tumbleweedrover, you need to consider manyaspects of how you’re going to get

Mr Pilbeam’s ‘Tumblecup’ prototype model, made from a lightweight plastic balland polystyrene cups.

Mr Pilbeam’s ‘Dandelion’ prototype model, made with polystyrene and BBQ skewers.

MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 3

20

the design to work, including:

Size - how large are the materialsbeing used? can it be made biggeror smaller?

Wind-catching surfaces – howmany; how big and what shape?

Mobility – can it negotiate the testsite?

Robustness – is it strong enough tosurvive rolling about?

Sample-gathering – how are yougoing to collect your sample?

Design in Detail

Size:

This depends partly on the weight ofthe materials and the area of thewind-catching surfaces. About 30 cmacross may be ok, but someexperimentation and calculation willhelp you reach your own decision.

Wind catching surfaces:

To make your rover move, you willneed to create a form with lots ofdrag. Normally, this is something we

try to avoid, particularly in designingaircraft, but this time, it’s a positiverequirement. You’re going to needshapes that will catch the windeffectively and continuously, so thatas it rolls, there’s always anothersurface catching the wind. For a listof materials, see the end of thearticle.

Mobility:

Your rover has got to move, and as itwon’t be a perfect sphere, it will havesome resistance to rolling. To getsome idea of this resistance, a goodtest is to set up an inclined plank,arranged at about 10°, in front of acalibrated scale (see diagrambelow).

First, roll the test ball down theslope, and time it. This will be motiondue to gravity (ignoring friction).Then put your rover at the top of theslope, give it a nudge, and run thetest again. Compare the two – howwill you use the informationobtained?

Videoing the tests will allow you todiscuss the results with others. If youattach targets to the rover and theball, which can be seen by the

camera, you can analyse the rover’smotion.

Robustness:

Drop it. Repeatedly.

Don’t think that if something falls off,you obviously don’t need it. Chooseadhesives that suit the materials.

Sample Gathering:

Your rover should have a purpose,which is to collect samples. Usingsomething sticky might be best,because making somethingmechanical might be too heavy.However, you’d need to think aboutwhere to place the sticky substancesbecause they may affect the mobilityof the rover. You may be able todrag some form of collector behindit, or brush samples up in someingenious manner, but these arealso design changes that may affectthe behaviour of your rover. How willyou keep it rolling while dragging acollector without getting the wholething tangled up or preventing itrolling in some directions, forexample?

To simulate sample gathering,scatter some light sand or Chinchilladusting powder (available from petstores) on the floor or ground, andarrange for your rover to roll acrossit. You may have to corral the roverso that it can only move in a straightline, or alternatively, use a locationwith lots of floor space. Rememberthat the sand could be blown awayby the wind source – how will yousolve this problem?

To test the efficiency of yourcollector, you could weigh itbeforehand, and then re-weigh itwith a sensitive balance. You couldalso simulate Martian microbes byincluding small pieces of polystyrenein the sand, and counting how manyyou recover.

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Testing your control model and your tumbleweed rover on a calibrated gradient slope.

21

MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 3

There will be another great experiment from MrPilbeam’s Laboratory in the next issue. We’d like to

hear how your experiments went, so if you want to sendin a class report, or pictures of your spacecraft

designs, we’ll put the best ones in the magazine.

Mr Pilbeam’s Laboratory presents a variety ofinteractive activities ranging from the Victorian era to

the Space Age, including presentations on thephenomena of reflection, the exploration of Mars,

rockets and robots. Although primarily aimed at ablechildren in Key Stages 2, 3 and 4, the activities aresuitable for a wide range of audiences, including

special interest groups for adults or children.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY TOVISIT YOUR SCHOOL, CONTACT TREVOR SPROSTON AT

sproston@ntlworld.com

EXTENSION ACTIVITY

To simulate data transmission, youcould install some LEDs at suitablepoints on the rover, and work out away to have some of them switch onwhen the rover comes to rest(microswitches are one method). Asthe rover is likely to be spherical, itcould sit in any orientation, so yourplanning would have to take this intoaccount. Your power source wouldalso have to be lightweight. Lithiumbutton batteries perhaps?

SOME SUGGESTIONS USINGPOLYSTYRENE TILES AND PIZZABASES.

These may not be complete answersto the problem, but they may help.

1. Wind wheel.(see picture below)

This lies flat on the ground until thewind blows, then it lifts and thevanes on the sides catch the wind,and off it (sometimes) goes.

2. Wind ball.(see picture above)

This catches the wind from anydirection, and is very fast andreliable with a good wind.

The Wind Ball

The Wind Wheel

CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS

There’s an amazing selection ofreally lightweight packaging aroundwhich can be recycled intotumbleweed rovers. Below is a list ofsuggested materials that you canuse to construct your rover, but youmight like to consider many differentmaterials, or different combinations,to see what works best.

Suggested Materials

plastic straws

bamboo BBQ skewers (can besharp)dry cleaning bags (keep away fromsmall children and animals)used fax rollsmylar (crisp packet material)tissue papergreaseproof paperpolystyrene ceiling tiles and pizzabasesdisposable cupsping pong ballssuitable adhesives – PVA, rubbersolution (Bostik, UHU etc.)

22

ON THE COVER

It’s just under 50 years sincethe first man-made objectwas put into space aroundthe Earth. When Sputnik waslaunched in October 1957, itwas the first step in thehuman journey beyond thecradle of our home planet.

But even today, the hugetimes and distancesinvolved in going anywherein space, even across ourown Solar System, meanthat we’ve barely dipped atoe in the vast ocean of theuniverse. We have satellitesin Earth orbit and we havesent probes to the Sun andall the planets in our SolarSystem except Pluto.

But the only place wherehumans have been otherthan our small blue planet isits own satellite and closestneighbour, the Moon. Wehave barely learned to walkout here, partly because theenvironment is such adangerous one and we aresimply not designed to livein it without creating ourown little artificial ‘Earths’ tolive on.

Here in this picture, you seesome of the most successfulspacecraft we have devised.Each of them has achievednotable successes and eachhas helped us to learn moreabout our planet, our SolarSystem and how we survivein space. But it will be a longlearning process before weare ‘Boldly going where noone has gone before.’

23

FOOTSTEPS IN SPACE

Each of these spacecraft is describedin more detail in the photo features onpages 4-7. But these are by no meansall the different types of spacecraft thathumans have flown or sent into space.Some of them are not shown becausethere are no pictures of them in space.This is because in the early days, therewas very little up there and nothing totake pictures of any new spacecraftlaunched.

The picture shows three types ofcapsule spacecraft; Soyuz, Gemini andApollo. But do you know the name of:

1) The Russian capsule that YuriGagarin used to make the first everhuman flight into space?

2) The capsule that started theAmerican human spaceprogramme?

Two space stations are also shown,Mir and ISS. But what was the name of:

3) The very first space stationlaunched in 1971?

4) The first American space station?

The four space probes shown here areVoyager, Pioneer, Galileo and Viking.But what is the name of:

5) The first probe to orbit Mars?

6) The probe currently orbitingSaturn?

7) The probe currently on its way toMercury?

Answers on page 42/43

WHERE TO GO

24

Seeing a genuine rocket launch hasalways been a dream of mine, butwhen I entered a competition at theFarnborough Airshow in the summerof 2004, I had no idea that the dreamwould soon become a reality.

Several months after the Airshow, Ihad completely forgotten about thequiz that I had answered in the spacepavilion – which asked about some ofthe missions and space industrycompanies on display. I was thereforetaken completely by surprise when Ireceived a call from the publicitydepartment of the European SpaceAgency, telling me that I’d won an all-expenses-paid trip to the KourouSpaceport in French Guiana. I couldbarely believe that I would be makingmy first visit to South America andtouring a genuine rocket launch site,when the situation got even better. Iwas told that the timing of my visitwould most likely coincide with thenext launch of an Ariane-5 rocket.

DelaysIn the months that followed, theschedule of Ariane-5 flight 164 (“V164”)suffered several delays, and for a whileit seemed that although I would still beable to visit the facilities, the launchitself would be out of reach. Eventuallyhowever, in February 2005, a friend andI joined a group of international VIPs ona once in a lifetime trip.

Before I went to French Guiana, I knewsurprisingly little about the Kourouspace centre, given that it has beenlaunching European Ariane rocketssince 1979. “Europe’s Spaceport” as itis known, is located near to the equator,meaning that it is well positioned forsending satellites into geostationaryorbits; and it is in a region with a smallpopulation and no risk of earthquakesor cyclones - ideal conditions for a safelaunch site.

The spaceport contains not only thelaunch platforms, but rocket assemblybuildings, the mission control centreand a space history museum – allsurrounded by dense rainforest. While

A Launch inby Elaine Baxter

there, we were told about theenvironmental and wildlife protectionprogrammes which the site runs –preventing the chemicals from therocket launches from ruining the idyllicsurroundings.

Tour of the SiteWe arrived in Kourou a few days beforethe launch, and had a chance to tour

the site facilities and meet some of thescientists working on both the Arianerocket and the satellites it would betaking into orbit. We were lucky enoughto be able to experience some of thefinal preparations before the launch –watching the rocket move out from itsassembly building onto the launch pad,and going to the final pre-launchmission briefing.

Ariane-V undergoing preparations for launch. E Baxter

A view of Kourou Space Centre - Europe’s ‘Spaceport’ E. Baxter

25

WHERE TO GOFrench Guiana

The previous launch of this type ofrocket had been a failure, and thefuture of Europe’s satellite-launchingbusiness was largely dependent onthe success of the V164 mission. Wevery quickly realised that a hugenumber of people had been involvedin building and testing the rocket andits payload, and that there were manypeople anxiously hoping for asuccessful launch.

Launch DayWhen the day of the launch arrived,we were taken to a viewing point 5 kmaway from the launch pad. Interviewswith people who had been involved inthe mission were played on televisionscreens as we watched the timercount down; and each department inthe mission control centre gave agreen light, saying that their part ofthe rocket or payload was ready to go.It was a heart-stopping momenthowever, only minutes before thelaunch was due to take place, whenseveral of the lights were changed tored and the countdown was aborted.

Fortunately it was only a matter ofminutes before the problem wasresolved and the countdown restarted,and we could soon see smoke risingfrom underneath the rocket. It then litup with a burst of flames, and a fewseconds after the rocket started tomove upwards, we were hit by a hugeburst of sound.

Incredible NoiseAlthough wemanaged to takesome pictures ofthe launch, thesound of the take-off is the thing thatI will remembermost clearly. Fromour safe distance itwas easy to forgethow big the rocketwas, but when weheard the sound ofthe engines, wewere left in nodoubt as to its

incredible power.

One of the largest rockets currently inservice, the Ariane-5 is capable of liftinghuge payloads into space, but onlyminutes after take-off, we could seeonly tiny specks of light in the distance.It left behind a huge column of smoke,which remained in the air as the sungradually set over the empty launch pad– it was a beautiful sight. Severalminutes after we had lost sight of therocket, we were told by mission controlthat the rocket had successfullyreleased the satellites which it hadcarried into orbit. It was only then that ahuge cheer erupted at the viewingtower, and not long afterwards, a hugelaunch party began.

French GuianaAs well as our experiences of thespaceport and its activities, we werealso lucky enough to be given a lookinside the culture and history of FrenchGuiana itself, managing to fit severalunforgettable experiences into only fourdays. As well as our visits to the launchsite and mission control centre, ourexcursions included a boat trip throughthe rainforests, and a visit to the “Devil’sIslands”. Once a penal colony whereFrench prisoners were sent to endurehard labour, these islands are now atropical paradise owned by the FrenchSpace Agency (CNES) in order to hostits launch tracking station. Walkingthrough the former prison buildings inthe tropical heat provided a starkcontrast to the modern facilities of thespaceport.

My trip to see flight 164 was anincredible experience which nothing hadquite prepared me for. To see a rocketlaunching into space is an incrediblereminder of the reality of spaceflight andhow far our technology has come. Ibought back from French Guiana alarge number of insect bites, lots andlots of photos, a new appreciation forthe role of Europe in the internationalspace industry; and most importantly ofall some incredible memories of thepeople, the country, and a beautifulrocket named Ariane.

French Guiana: rainforest, a space port, and lots of insects! E. Baxter

A successful launch and V-164 is on its way E Baxter

THE NIGHT SKY

26

3. Through TheBy Dave Buttery, FRAS

Dave Buttery is a Fellow of theRoyal Astronomical Society and amember of many Astronomical andEducational groups.

He is the senior partner in AURIGAAstronomy, an astronomicaleducation service for schools,which helps teachers with theastronomical components of theNational Curriculum via his mobileplanetarium ‘The Auriga StarDome’.

For further details on what Davecan offer your school, call

01909 531507 or visit AURIGAAstronomy’s website

www.auriga-astronomy.com

This is the third in a series ofarticles designed to helpnewcomers enjoy the wonders ofour magnificent night sky.

In the last article, we looked at the typesof telescopes available to the beginneror casual hobbyist; this time, we aregoing to look at telescope mounts andthe most important part of any telescope– the eyepiece.

Firstly though, a bit of revision.Remember that the Earth tilts at 23.5° inrelation to the celestial horizon (see Fig.1), which is why the sun takes an arcedpath across our sky. With a basictelescope mount, you constantly have tomake corrections for the apparentmovement of the stars in two directions.In other words, you need to move thescope diagonally across the sky to keepyour viewing object in the viewfinder.

Telescope MountsNow to the types of mount. The mostbasic mount (with the exception of avery strange scope I’ll look at later) isthe Alt-Az (Altazimuth). Here, the scopeis mounted in a basic up-down (altitude)left-right (azimuth) way. It’s easy to useand easy to set up, but objects in thesky don’t move in this way, they followthe celestial equator,

This is not a major problem, however,

and millions of this type of mount are inuse across the world today (in fact ALLthe biggest professional telescopes usea variation of this type of mount). Thesimplest and most common type is oftenfound on cheap telescopes. It workswell, but it does have its limitations; fineadjustment is beyond it and it can makesmooth panning across the sky difficult.

‘Go-To’ TelescopesHowever, these mounts come into theirown when a computer and motor driveare added – the ‘Go-To’ telescope –and while purists shy away from them,they do have a number of advantages.Firstly, they make finding ‘difficult’objects easier (though still not easy!)and, most importantly, they compensatefor the Earth’s rotation by moving in theopposite direction, so that objects stayin the viewfinder for much longer (whichis great if you get intoastrophotography). Once you startlooking at an object like Saturn, youreally come to understand the rotationof the Earth and it becomes a seriouspain without a ‘Go-To’ telescope. Ofcourse you don’t have to use the go-tofacility, but the rotation compensation isa godsend, believe me.

Alt-Az mounts come in various typesand looks, from the basic to the exoticones that are employed on much moreexpensive telescopes. The reason for

their everlasting popularity, particularlysince the dawn of the computerisedage, is their simplicity to build and usecompared with the German Equatorialmounts, although as we will see, eventhese are getting computerised thesedays. Aligning a telescope beforeviewing is essential, and critical if usingthe go-to facility. For most computerisedmounts, you simply need to make surethe tube of the scope is level (use asmall spirit level) and, pointing north,either aim at the Pole Star or use acompass, then make the slightadjustment for true north vs magneticnorth and you are away. If you don’thave a computerised Alt-Az, you cansimply place the telescope down andbegin.

German Equatorial MountThe German Equatorial mount (EQ) is avery different beast. Favoured bypurists, it was certainly better than theAlt-Az before the invention of drivenscopes and computers, but today thequestion of which is best is open todebate. The EQ mount operates on twoaxes; one being Right Ascension (RA),and the other being Declination (Dec).

What this means is that you MUSTpolar align this scope at ALL times, butthen you can simply use the two strangeknobs on wires sticking out from themount to easily track objects as they

Celestial Horizon

Fig 1. Diagram of the Earth’stilt of 23.5° in relation to theCelestial Horizon

Celestial Equator

MeridianZenith

North Celestial Pole

South Celestial Pole

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THE NIGHT SKYLooking Glass

appear to move across the sky,because the RA axis follows the naturalpath of objects as they move. It’s abrilliant invention but it does have it’sdownsides. Firstly, because the scopeis being held in a position ‘off centre’ ofthe tripod, it has to be counterbalanced.This would not appear to be much of aproblem, but the counter balanceweights for an 8" telescope can weighas much as 30 kg! That’s a lot of weightto carry in addition to the scope andtripod. Secondly, EQ mounts are notspace conscious, as the counterbalance arms stick out in the oppositedirection to the scope. An 8" scope onan EQ mount can occupy a small livingroom! Please don’t get the idea I’magainst them, because EQ mounts aresuperb and if space, weight andportability are not a problem then youshould get one (especially models suchas the Meade LXD range, which aredriven, computerised and affordable). It’sjust that they are a bit harder to operateuntil you get used to them and youcannot use an EQ-mounted scope toview anything other than stars.

Dobsonian MountsOther types of mounts are basicallyvariants of these two (usually the Alt-Az)and the most popular of these is theDobsonian (Dob) mount, named afterit’s creator. It’s basically a rough andready, cheap to make, easy to usepoint-and-look mount that is generally

used to produce cheap ‘light buckets’i.e. BIG scopes. You will find it hard tofind a Dob under a scope smaller than6", for two reasons.

As I said, astronomers use Dobs to getmore inches for their money but, as youcan see from the picture above right,because the scope stands on it’s end, itneeds to have weight to maintainstability, and although most of theweight is in the base, a sturdy telescopetube does help. Lately, Dobsonianmounts have acquired limitedcomputerised capability, but as I haveno experience of these I cannot castcomment on their abilities. I do,however, use a 6" Dob on a regularbasis. ALL Dobsonian mounted scopesare of the Newtonian Reflector type,where as Alt-Az and EQ mountedscopes can often be reflectors orrefractors (see Voyage issue 3 formore details on these types of scope).

A brilliant variant of the Dobsonian isthe Bushnell type of mount. This is aseriously fun scope and perfect for kids.It’s basically a small reflector mountedonto or into a hard ball, which sits on aconcave mount. You sit (or place it on asturdy table) and simply aim/look. Thereare no alignments to worry about; noaxes to confuse you; and moving thisscope around is a joy. It is alsoextremely portable because of it’sdesign and in fact, Celestron make aversion called the ‘Explorascope’ (belowright) that has ‘back pack’ type strapsattached to carry it around. If you areplanning to travel from your home to thedeep countryside, it’s got to be worthconsidering, and if you want to do yourastronomy from a hill or mountain top,it’s the only practical scope of choice.But again remember it does have it’slimits. It’s small and being carriedaround a lot may affect it’s interior

A comparison of telescope mounts. (l-r) A computerised ‘go-to’ mounted scope; a German Equatorial mounted scope, showing the two ‘strange knobs onwires’ used for tracking purposes and the heavy counterweight; a Dobsonian mounted telescope.

(l) a Bushnell-typeDobsonian mount (r)The Celestron‘Explorascope’version of theBushnell-type mount

THE NIGHT SKY

28

alignment/collimation etc (I have neverowned one, so I cannot confirm this).

So which mount do you choose? Well,that question is largely academic as youdon’t get a choice – the mount suppliedwith your scope is the one you are stuckwith – but there are often choices withranges of scopes as to which mountcomes with which scopes. I have nopersonal favourite, but unless you arepatient and prepared to learn aboutsetting circles, I would lean away fromEQ mounted scopes.

EYEPIECESThese are the critically important (andoften overlooked) part of any telescope,and eyepieces are NOT cheap.However, they are interchangeablebetween scopes, so you will realisticallyonly ever need one set.

It’s the eyepiece that enables you tosee anything at all when you look into atelescope, so first a bit of basics. Mostmodern telescopes and eyepieces havea barrel diameter of 1.25" and whenbuying secondary eyepieces (in additionto the ones supplied with your scope),you must make sure they have thecorrect diameter, or they simply wont fit!

Eye ReliefEye relief is the distance between thefinal glass surface of the eyepiece andthe lens of your eye when you arelooking through it. It is the space intowhich your glasses must fit, if you wearthem when you observe, and is theclearance which keeps your eyelashesfrom smearing the outermost lenssurface of the eyepiece, and youreyebrow ridges and cheekbones fromjiggling the telescope.

Barlow LensA Barlow lens may be used witheyepieces to change theirmagnification. The best way to think of aBarlow lens is as a device whichmultiplies the telescope’s focal length.Thus if you insert a 3x Barlow lens intothe back of a telescope with 1000 mmfocal length, the combined focal lengthof the telescope and Barlow lensbecomes 3000 mm, and themagnification of any eyepiece used with

the telescope will be tripled when it isused with the Barlow lens, compared tothe magnification without.

MagnificationThe magnification of a telescope is theratio of its focal length to the focallength of the eyepiece in use. Thus atelescope with a 1000 mm focal length,used with an eyepiece of 25 mm focallength, has a magnification of 1000/25,or 40. It makes things look 40 timeswider, or if you prefer, 40 times closer.Put in an eyepiece with 4 mm focallength, and the same telescope nowhas magnification of 1000/4, or 250.Some folks think high magnification iswhat telescopes are all about, but thereis a lot more to it. If an object issufficiently bright to begin with, thenincreasing magnification up to certain apoint will generally allow you to seemore details. But, the key question iswhere that ‘certain point’ is. There is nosingle answer and if you increase themagnification of your telescope in smallincrements, there are several reasonswhy you might want to stop after awhile.

They include:Poor seeing. At sufficient magnification,images may look as if you were viewingthrough swirling water – the effect ofturbulence in the atmosphere. Thegreater the magnification, the worse thisproblem becomes.

Less than perfect telescope optics.Other things being ok, poor optics willgive a blurrier image than good optics.There’s no point magnifying detail thatisn’t there!

Natural limit to magnification. There is alimit to the amount of detail in the imageof even a perfect telescope and there is

no point using more magnification thanit takes to see all of it. The amount ofdetail present in the image formed by aperfect telescope, in perfect conditions,is proportional to its clear aperture.Doubling the aperture produces twiceas sharp a view. Thus the maximumamount of magnification that is useful isproportional to aperture: As a rule ofthumb, it is extremely rare for anobserver to have any use for amagnification much greater thanapproximately twice the telescope’sclear aperture in millimetres – thatwould be 300x on a 150 mm telescope.This final point is really important, asmany telescopes in the lower pricerange are often advertised withmagnifications way outside the practicalrange.

Focal LengthsFocal lengths of commercially availabletelescope eyepieces range from 2.5 mmto 60 mm or more. However in practice,it’s better to have less in number andgreater in quality than the other wayaround. Two or three top qualityeyepieces (and you can pay over £100for one top notch eyepiece) are a realinvestment, because as I said earlieryou can keep them and use them withother scopes as your interest develops.A 10 or 12.5 mm and a 20 or 25 mm area good start.

These are probably the ones you gotwith your scope, but more often thannot, sub-£300 telescopes come with‘standard’, bottom of the rangeeyepieces. This does not mean they areno good, or poor, but upgrading themwill improve what you see.

(l) A Barlow Lens thatcan be used witheyepieces to change themagnification of theimages in your telescope

(r) A pair of eyepieces(12 mm and 20 mm).These are the focallengths that you arelikely to have receivedwith your telescope, butit is worth investing inbetter quality ones toimprove your viewing.

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THE NIGHT SKYA bit like camera lenses, multi-coatedscope lenses are better and certainlythe standard lenses you use should becorrected for lateral chromaticaberration. This is a standard problemwith all eyepieces that results in clearwhite objects such as the Moon andstars appearing to have a red/blueoutline. Poor lenses do not correct this;good ones do.

Multi-coating also helps improve sharpness.

You will often see words such a MA,Plössls and Super Plössls, which are alldescriptions of the type of lens. Thereisn’t room here to go into each design,but suffice to say that Plössls are betterthen MA, and Super Plössls are evenbetter and each telescope manufacturerwill also have their own cataloguenames for these types of lens. Forexample, Meade have Series 4000 and5000 and Celestron have E-Lux, Ultimaand so on.

WHAT’S IN THE SKY TO SEE?Before we finish, let’s look at what’saround in the Spring and early Summersky. Sadly, there’s not as much asduring the winter (there’s not as muchnight for one thing). The maps shownare for midnight on 30 June 2005

In the South East, there is the classicsign of summer, the Summer Triangle.This is not a constellation, but threestars (Vega, Altair and Deneb) each intheir own constellation, but who’sbrightness stands out from the rest. Justappearing over the southern Horizon forthose with a clear unobstructed view areScorpius and Sagittarius.

In the South West, the two dominantconstellations are Bootes and Virgo(they are South in May and early June),with Jupiter dazzling below Virgo. Youcan’t miss Jupiter this year as only theSun and Moon are brighter.

Finally, a quick look to the North revealsthe Great Square of Pegasus, withAndromeda curving away from theupper left corner. Half way up the curveand about 1 closed fist at arms lengthhigher, (under clear dark skies) is thegreat Andromeda Galaxy M31. Don’tuse your telescope, or if you do, use thelowest magnification, as this object istruly massive, 2 million (ish) light yearsaway and moving towards us. M31 isone of the wonders on the night sky.

All images courtesy of Starizona http://www.starizona.com Meade www.meade.comand Celestron www.celestron.com

Scutum

NE Sky

Cassiopeia

Lacerta

PegasusM31 Andromeda

Perseus

Triangulum

SW Sky

Corona Borealis

OphiuchusSerpens Caput

BoötesCanes Venatici

Coma Berenices

LibraVirgo

JUPITER

SE Sky

CygnusDENEB VEGA

Lyra Hercules

Vulpecula

Sagitta

DelphinusALTAIR

Equuleus AquilaOphiuchus

Serpens Cauda

Serpens Caput

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT..?

30

SPACE SHUTTLE

Hard at WorkThe Space Shuttle’sachievements since its firstlaunch in April 1981 include:launching over 1.5 million kg ofcargo; transporting more than600 passengers and pilots intospace; cumulatively spendingmore than three years in flight;and travelling more than 600million km. That’s far enoughto go to Mars and back twiceover or almost a one-way tripto Jupiter

Shuttle MenuEach astronaut on the shuttle is allotted 6 kg offood per day (including packaging). Food isindividually packed and stowed for easy handlingin zero gravity, and is precooked or processed so itrequires no refrigeration and is either ready to eat,or can be prepared simply by adding water or byheating. The only exceptions are the fresh fruit andvegetables stowed in the fresh food locker. Thesehave to be eaten within the first two days of theflight or they will go off.

Fleet of ShipsThere have been six shuttles in all; Atlantis,Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, Endeavour andEnterprise. Of these, Columbia and Challengerwere both lost in accidents and Enterprise was atest vehicle that was incapable of flying in space. Itwas originally going to be called Constitution, untilfans of the show Star Trek persuaded NASA torename it.

LocomotionEach Space Shuttle Main Engineweighs just one seventh as much asa train engine, but can deliver asmuch horsepower as 39 locomotives.There are three such engines on theShuttle

Flying the FlagAlthough at first glance itappears that the US flag onthis side of the shuttle isbackwards, there is a verygood reason for this. Theregulation for displaying aUS flag on a national vehiclestates that the star fieldmust be positioned at thefront of the vehicle, as if theflag were ‘flying’ along theside of the vehicle. Thiscauses the flag to look asthough it is backwards onone side

Hotting UpThe Space Shuttle Main Engines operate at greatertemperature extremes than any mechanical system incommon use today. The liquid hydrogen fuel is the secondcoldest liquid on Earth at -423°F (-253°C). When it and theliquid oxygen are combined, the temperature in the maincombustion chamber reaches 6000°F (3316°C). That’s hotterthan the boiling point of iron and about the sametemperature as the surface of the Sun

Speedy TripThe Space Shuttle does 0 to 28,000kph in just 8.5 minutes. The speed ofthe gases exiting the Solid RocketBoosters (the white tubes either sideof the orange tank) is 9,600 kph -three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet.

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GIANT WORDSEARCH - MARS - The Red Planet

T I T A N A P I O S T O C D E A E

H Y P E R I O N A P A B C C B D N

W B N B S O M L R U E E A K E N C

J J J E H C T O T C H R L M H A L

P A N U R A M X O K T O Y V T R H

R A N O M E D S E D L N P Q A I A

E O C U T G I T I A A W S H M M A

S G S H S I E D I G M D O A Z I P

X U E A A W R B I T A M L L L G O

O U D S L S U T E P A I D E M H R

S M M A O I S Q R O A N H I D H U

A B E D L M N I W P H P I R E A E

I R T Z V E I D R B O P C A R M E

T I I G O S C E W A T E L E S T O

R E S A M I M N D Q L N O R A H C

O L J U L I E T E S O B O H P B H

P D S Y H T E T K L S I N O P E J

Hidden in this grid are 40 of the moons that orbit some of the other planets in our solar system from Mars and beyond.When you’ve done the word search, why not see if you can find out which moons belong to which planet.

Words in the grid can run backwards, forwards, up, down and diagonally. Answers on Page 42/43.

Puzzle by Miranda Line

WORD LIST

AmaltheaArielAtlasCalypsoCarmeCharonDeimosDesdemonaEnceladusEuropa

GanymedeHimaliaHyperionIapetusJanusJulietLarissaLedaMetisMimas

MirandaNereidOberonOpheliaPanPhobosPhoebePortiaPrometheusPuck

RheaRosalindSinopeTelestoTethysThebeTitanTianiaTritonUmbriel

SPACE HISTORY

32

The Great Moon Hoaxby David A. HardyThe Apollo Moon landings are

quite rightly hailed as one of thegreatest achievements of the20th century, and probably thegreatest success for the USspace agency, NASA. But even inthe US, there are many who castdoubt upon the wholeprogramme.

More than 35 years after the firstmanned Moon landing, the question isstill asked: How could NASA actuallyhave carried out such a bold and riskyproject in so short a time? Did theApollo astronauts really land on theMoon at all, or were the missionsfaked, merely a huge propagandaswindle by the CIA?

Evidence

To most people, this seems absurd.Apart from the fact that thousands ofNASA employees would have had tokeep the secret for almost 40 years,there is no doubt that the SovietUnion would have been all too eagerto prove such trickery by its greatestrival had the landings been faked. Andyet the ‘conspiracy theory’ still persists.Many of the sceptics turn tophotographic evidence as ‘proof’ that thelandings were faked. But those samephotographs and films can be used toprove that the landings were real.

All the Apollo missions carried anextensive photo and video set-up onboard, which was employed extensivelyduring the flights and on the surface ofthe Moon. The photos were taken using70 mm cameras supplied by Hasselblad.A special model was produced forNASA, one that worked with speciallydesigned film from Kodak which wouldnot be damaged by the hightemperatures of the daylight side of theMoon.

The video images, especially from theearly landings, were poor qualitytransmissions. Every sci-fi series of the1960s ran more realistic pictures ofspace adventures than was receivedfrom the live pictures of the Apollo

missions and this serves as the firstargument from the sceptics:

Were the TV pictures from Apollodeliberately so bad to hide the fact thatthey were filmed in a studio on Earth?

The basis for this doubt came from the1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Evenbefore Apollo had landed on the Moon,Stanley Kubrik and his team hadconstructed lavish studio sets and filmedrealistic looking scenes of people on theMoon. Could NASA have done the samething? In theory, yes, and the poortransmission quality of the images couldhave hidden various studio tricks thatwould have to be used to simulatewalking on the Moon in low gravity.

Early Landings

At first, this seems feasible, especiallyfor Apollo 11 and 12. The astronauts onthe first landing only moved a fewmetres from their landing vehicle, as aprecaution in case of emergency. If this

was faked, then only a limited amountof studio space would have beenneeded. For Apollo 12, studio filmingwould certainly have been moreexpensive. The crew landed near anunmanned lunar probe (Surveyor 3)and walked over to investigate it,returning parts of it to Earth for study.This would have required a muchlarger studio set and would have costmuch more, and some of the imageswould have been difficult andexpensive to fake (see picture right).

More difficult to fake, however, wouldhave been the later landings of Apollo14, and especially 15, 16 and 17 onwhich the Lunar Rover wasextensively used. By the time of theselater landings, the picture quality hadimproved greatly and the Rovers sentback images covering a vast area anda great variety of land formations.Simulations of this scale may bepossible with today’s computergraphics, but at the time of the Moonlandings, such techniques weresimply not available.

Another key point comes from the ‘road’performance of the Rover and the way inwhich the dust it raised behaved. This isstrongly dependent upon the actualgravity on site and the availability of anatmosphere. The stirred up dustbehaves completely differently than itwould on Earth by following ballisticcurves. If an atmosphere or wind hadbeen available, such as on a film studioset, the Rover wheels would have stirredup clouds of dust instead, so it is clearthat the images of the Rover must haveat least have been shot in a vacuum.

Shadows

There is no atmosphere on the Moon.From this, it follows that all objects onthe Moon’s surface would have anespecially sharp contrast between lightand shadow because neither airmolecules nor trapped aerosols or finedust could scatter the light. But severalphotos taken on the Moon show a

Probably the most famous Apollo image of Buzz Aldrin.Neil Armstrong carried the only camera, so there are veryfew photographs of the actual ‘First Man on the Moon.’Surely NASA would not have made this mistake if thelandings were faked? The Sun is shining from behindAldrin, but we can still see the shadowed side of thespace suit because of the reflectivity of the Moon’ssurface.

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SPACE HISTORY

phenomenon that doesn’t fit with thisfact. For example, images of theastronauts photographed in back-litconditions clearly show details of partsof their suit that should be in darkness.According to NASA, no floodlighting wastaken to the Moon, so the only light thatshould come into play would be from theSun. This is more ammunition for thesceptics, ‘proving’ that everything wasshot in a studio under multiple lights.

Actually, no. The Moon’s surface has arelatively high angle-of-vision reflectioncapability. What this means is that theupper layer of the Moon’s dust and rockscontains a high proportion of stronglyreflective minerals. How bright thesurface shines is therefore dependent

upon the angle from which you lookrelative to the Sun. In the photographs,this reflectivity simply bounces thesunlight up on to the picture and this isenough for details to show up on theimage where there should only beshadows.

The surface of the Moon is very differentthan what we are accustomed to onEarth, and while some adjustments tothe photos have clearly been done toenhance certain features using basicdarkroom techniques (for example, theUS flag looks particularly bright on someimages), enhancing the shadows inthese photos enough to show such detailwould be very difficult without distortingthe rest of the image.

Parallel Lines

This is not the only area of scepticismwith the shadows, however. In someimages, the length and direction of theshadows is clearly visible. With only onelight source available (the Sun), theseshadows should run almost completelyparallel. On several images of theastronauts on the Moon’s surface, theshadows do not run parallel and oftenshow different lengths to similar objectnearby. This is again seen by scepticsas proof of multiple light sources, likeyou would get in a film studio.

Wrong again. The deciding factor forparallel shadows on photos of a three-dimensional landscape is the surfacestructure. For the shadows to runparallel, the observed objects and theirshadows would have to stand at thesame height on or above the ground andon an absolutely even surface. This iscertainly not the case on the surface ofthe Moon. It has countless craters, hillsand dips which build up a very complexsurface structure.

If you examine the photos more closely,

This image of Surveyor 3 was taken by theApollo 12 astronauts. Their Lunar Module canbe seen on the very close horizon (the Moon isonly a quarter of the size of Earth with one-sixthof the gravity). What a difficult shot to fake,especially on movie, where they are travellingaround it.

One photograph seized upon by the conspiracy theorists to ‘prove’ that more than one light was used is this one on the left. Lines drawn through theshadows do appear to show that they are not parallel, but this is easily explained by perspective and the bumpiness of the surface. Note that there areno double shadows. In the highly exaggerated digital image on the right, you can see the single light source shining from behind the planet surface. Thisshows how the nature of the surface can affect the apparent direction of shadows.

SPACE HISTORY

34

there is almost always a noticeableheight difference between the objectsthemselves and the shadows they havegenerated. An astronaut who stands onan incline will cast a shorter shadowthan that of an astronaut standing a fewmetres away, but on level ground. In thesame way, a shadow which falls from therim of a crater where the surface isuneven will seem to be forked to thedistant onlooker. Also, unless the ‘filmstudio’ lighting conditions wereabsolutely perfect for all objects, from alldirections, and at all times, then severalof the objects on the Moon photos wouldhave more than one shadow. Just look atthe shadows cast by floodlights at afootball match.

Stars in the Sky

Another consequence of the Moonhaving no atmosphere is that the starsare visible from the surface at all times,even on the daylight side. In the Apollophotographs, the sky is shown as almostcompletely black, with no stars visible atall. How could this be?

This is one of the simpler arguments tocounter. The dynamic area of aphotographic film is not sufficient todepict the light difference between theMoon’s surface and the relatively weaklight from the stars. It is impossible to dojustice to both objects equally withchemical film. Even if there were fainttraces of the stars in a well-litphotograph, the only way to bring themout would be through extreme contraststrengthening, which would simply makethe rest of the image unusable.

Beauty Treatment

This is not to say that the photos takenon the Moon haven’t been ‘cosmeticallyimproved’ and to a competentphotographer, these improvements arerelatively easy to spot. But there is adifference between enhancing theimages and faking them. Apart from theUS flag, one of the most obviousenhancements is the transition betweenthe Moon’s horizon and the adjacent sky,which you would expect to be razor

sharp given the lack of atmosphere. Inmany pictures, there is a short transition,of uniform size, in which the Moon’shorizon visibly darkens.

This was likely done using basicdarkroom methods after the return toEarth and was probably done to reducebackground ‘noise’ that detracted fromthe image. If you run some of the non-enhanced pictures through modernphoto imaging software, this non-uniform‘noise’ becomes clearly visible. Oneexplanation for this is that thetemperature of the film emulsion was toohigh. On the daylight side, thetemperature of the cameras could reachup to 100°C and although the cameraswere cooled, it is quite likely that the filmbecame too hot and therefore more‘noise’ was created.

Targeting the Cross-Hair

On several photographs, the automaticcross-hair (etched into the lens of thecamera) is partially covered by theobject being photographed. If thesephotos were genuine, say the sceptics,that would be impossible because the

All of the Apollo missions brought back photos of the Earth and Moon taken from various distancesin space. This one shows the Moon from Apollo 11, with the dark, circular ‘Sea of Crises’ like abullseye near its centre. The Moon as we see it from Earth is inset in the top corner. Take a looknext time you see the Moon in the sky of a film or TV programme; it is remarkable how often animage like this is used, the producers apparently not noticing that such an angle is impossible fromEarth. If the Apollo missions were faked, all such images would have to be false or taken with acamera sent out this far. If you’re going to do that anyway, why bother to fake the images at all?

cross-hair must always lie on top of thesubject being photographed.

The cross-hair was particularly useful formosaic photographs, as a point ofreference to enable the mosaic to becompiled from the many images taken,but with the cross-hair being etched onthe lens, it should always appear on topof the image being photographed. Sowhy is it partially covered in some of thepictures?

The answer lies in the subject beingphotographed. All the photos with partlycovered cross-hairs are quite similar inthat the missing parts of the cross-hairare in areas that are either very light orvery dark. This means that the problemis quite simply over-exposure of thepicture. Either the very thin line of thecross-hair was over-exposed through thelight scattering in the camera, or itsimply blended beyond the contrastcapacity of the film because thebackground was too dark.

If NASA had manipulated these pictures,the missing cross-hairs would be atworst careless, at best unprofessional. It

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SPACE HISTORY

David A. Hardy is a renowned spaceartist, who has illustrated and producedcovers for dozens of books, both factand fiction, including many by PatrickMoore, and some by Arthur C. Clarkeand the late Carl Sagan.

In 1974, he started writing his own non-fiction books for both children andadults and has also written a novel,Child of Two Worlds and worked on SFand factual magazines, movies, TV,computer games, record covers andvideo.

See his website, www.astroart.org formore details

It is of course possible to create fake Moon photos, as this image shows. This photo was made bythe author using ‘old-fashioned’ darkroom methods (ie, not digital) in 1984, but it took many hours ofpainstaking work. Modern digital techniques and computer graphics would make such fakes mucheasier to do, but in 1969, these techniques simply weren’t available. This image also shows anotherpopular conspiracy ‘proof’ - the flag flying when there is no wind. This was simply done using wiresand supports inside the flag to ensure that Americans could celebrate a great national achievement.

would be simpler to mount the picturesfirst and copy the cross-hairs afterwardsthan to take the image and then copyother objects on to the photograph overthe cross hair.

Expensive Set

Of course, although the cross-hair wasuseful for making mosaic images, thesewould not necessarily suit the glossymagazines of the time, so it is quitelikely that some of the cross-hairs wereretouched for commercial use.Interestingly, the mosaic pictures aremore evidence that the Moon landingswere not faked. In order to produce abackdrop of such size, it would haveneeded both a huge area and a bigbudget. Imagine a 100-metre acrossvacuum chamber which would have beenneeded to film such a Moon panoramaand produce the correct effects of theMoon dust. Just to evacuate the air fromsuch a chamber would take a colossalamount of electricity and it would have tobe done on a daily basis before anyfilming could be started; more regularly ifthere were problems with the filming thatrequired technicians to enter thechamber. The amount of time it wouldtake to remove or pump in air for such a

chamber would make each filming dayvery long and the whole shoot veryexpensive.

Flying the Flag

Another common area of doubt cited bythe sceptics is the flying Stars andStripes flag. If there is no wind oratmosphere on the Moon, then the flagshould not be flapping about but shouldbe drooping, or at best completely still.This argument can be easily refuted.

Given that the Moon landings were amajor source of pride and achievementfor America, especially after beingbeaten to so many space ‘firsts’ by theSoviet Union, it is inconceivable thatthey would want their national flag tohang limply from the pole like somesoggy hankie. But as there is no wind onthe Moon, there would be no way to getthe flag to fly naturally, so wires andsupports were inserted into the flag tomake sure it stood out from the polewhen it was planted. Equally, if the flagwas bumped into by the astronauts, thelack of atmosphere means that therewould be no friction from the airmolecules to reduce the motion of theflag, so it would reverberate for much

longer than it would on Earth.

As a final proof of the reality of thelandings, the flag on the Apollo 12mission was not successfully erectedand was truly a sorry sight. The camerasfailed early in the mission but not beforethe flag was shown. If this scene wasbeing faked, no film maker would havesettled for such a laughable sight andwould have demanded that the scene bere-shot with a fully working flag.

Proof Enough?

There are many arguments that can beused to prove that the Apollo Moonlandings really happened, but thesceptics and the conspiracy theorists willcontinue to choose to believe that thewhole thing was faked in spite ofconsiderable evidence to the contrary.NASA has said that it could quite easilyprove that the landings were real byfocusing the Hubble Space Telescope onthe Moon and taking pictures of theequipment left there. But they expectthat the sceptics would consider theseimages to be faked as well, so there isreally no point in doing so. It wouldprobably take evidence fromindependent sources to convince thesceptics, but it is most likely that we willhave to wait until we return to the Moonin the future or until we are able to visitthe Moon as tourists and take guidedtours to the Historic Apollo Landing Sitesbefore the conspiracy theory can be laidto rest.

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37

PHOTO COMPETITION - WHERE IS ITA slight change this issue. Instead of What is it, can you work out Where is it? This is a view of one of the mostfamous volcanoes on Earth, photographed from the International Space Station. Clue? It’s not a neat place to be.

The winning answer will be printed in the next issue of Voyage.

LAST ISSUECongratulations to Jennifer Benkovich for correctly

guessing that this image from issue 3 was the tail finof the Space Shuttle. Jennifer will receive signed

datacards of Jack Lousma and Ed Gibson.

Remember, you can enter any of the competitions bypost or email, whichever you prefer. Please get the

permission of your parent, guardian or teacher if youare under 16.

THE PRIZEAn autographed photograph of Valeri Bykovsy and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space and the cosmonautwho flew the joint flight with her in 1963.Runners up will receive a copy of the next issue of Voyage.Please mark your entry Photo Competition 4 and send to the address on page 2

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38

The Trouble with Timeby Mat IrvineThe return of Doctor Who to our TV

screens has reminded us of one ofthe most controversial of all sciencefiction themes – time travel.

Although much of science fiction drawson technology that is currentlyimpossible, or at the very least difficultto see how it could be made to work,the majority is still based on The Lawsof Physics - even travelling faster-than-light. However, time travel brings in somany paradoxes – situations where ifone thing happens, another happens,except that can’t happen if the first thinghappened – that it becomes extremelydifficult, many would say impossible, tosee if it could ever be made to work?

The major paradox with time travel iscalled ‘causality’ – the problem of causeand effect. Simply put, you have to firsthave a cause to produce an effect, itcannot be the other way round.Although time travel in general is a realproblem to understand, ‘causality’ canactually be explained very easily,(although it poses more questions thananswers, and you may be none thewiser afterwards!).

Just image this scenario. You have builta time machine. You get inside, set thecontrols 100 years before today’s date,press the ‘Go’ button and you arewhisked back in time 100 years.Unfortunately when the machine lands(or however time machines stop), it isright on top of your grandfather as ayoung boy who, even moreunfortunately, is killed.

At that point your grandfather isunfortunately now dead, so he cannotmarry the lovely girl he’d been courting,who cannot then become yourgrandmother, who then cannot haveone of your parents, so you cannot beborn, meaning you’re not there to builda time machine, which means you can’tgo back and be the cause of yourgrandfather’s demise, meaning you areborn after all, so you can build… Well,by now you are probably getting thegeneral idea (and probably a

avoid this encounter at 20, butyou’ve already remembered youhad this encounter 10 yearsbefore. And anyway suppose youdidn’t have the skills to build atime machine at 20, but you’vealready met yourself in a timemachine at 10? (It is perfectlyacceptable for your brain to beaching slightly more at thispoint…)

In both the aforementioned SFstories, these bizarre meeting-with-yourself encounters are –fortunately – got around, by atleast one set of the peopleinvolved. In the Doctor Whostory, the ‘second pair’ of Roseand The Doctor see the ‘first pair’of themselves still standing onthe pavement, but without theiralter-egos seeing them, as they

have their backs to them. In Back to theFuture, Marty McFly rushes round thecorner just as his ‘other self’ is rushingoff in the DeLorean Time Machine – soagain he narrowly avoids a strangeencounter. However, in the sameDoctor Who story, at one point there arethree Roses supposedly ‘in existence’ atthe same time, and Rose does meet

herself, although in this case the ‘otherher’ is only a baby, so maybe theyounger Rose wouldn’t remember.

headache…). So it is ‘causality’ thatmakes time travel one of the mostdifficult concepts to even try and getyour head around.

There could be even weirder effectscaused by time travel, as demonstratedboth in the movie Back To the Futureand one of the new Doctor Who stories(Father’s Day) –that is coming faceto face withyourself! Supposeinstead of settingthe time back 100years, you set itback only 10 years,and you arecurrently aged 20?If you land in yourown back garden10 yearspreviously, there’sa good chanceyou’ll come face toface with yourselfthere – aged 10.Consequently, you are extremely likelyto remember this event 10 years on,which would probably mean you would

Doctor Who’s time machine, the TARDIS Mat Irvine

How to make a time machine, take one DeLorean sports car, add dials,gauges and miles of wiring and if your name is Doc Brown, you can builda genuine Time Machine - if not, well it’ll all be good fun anyway...

Mat Irvine

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And maybe this is one way out of this. Ifyou can travel back in time, maybesome mechanism comes into play thatensures you can never meet yourself, ordo anything, such as killing yourgrandfather, which changes the future –back to our causality again. RememberHomer had this problem in one of the‘Treehouse of Horror’ episodes of TheSimpsons. He keeps going back toprehistoric times, swats a mosquito, andwhen he returns to ‘the present’, thingshave changed in subtle (or, being TheSimpsons, not so subtle) ways. Havinggone through coming back to a timewhen Ned Flanders rules the world, (aplace in which Homer could never live!),to his house being transformed into apalace, but no-one knows whatdoughnuts are (ditto, though he doesn’tstay long enough to find out that theyare actually there, but appear instead ofrain in that particular world), he

eventually settleson what appears tobe his ‘normal’household, eventhough everyoneeats their food byflicking out a long,lizard-like, tongue!“Close enough…”he mutters.

This is the thismain problem ofcausality – thesituation of doingsomething ‘in thepast’ that wouldeffect something

‘back in the future’. It is not necessarilyso immediately obvious as killing yourgrandfather, it may be as simple asswatting that mosquito or treading on abutterfly, which causes massivechanges in the future, which is theprimary argument against time travel.But changes occur naturally throughmutation, so who can really say if thefact that we have ten toes is a naturalmutation, or because some timetraveller trod on a diplodocus’ foot?However if you were able to travel backin time, but could only observe and notaffect anything, maybe this would allowtime travel to work. It’s possible youcould not even be seen by those in thepast, so you wouldn’t be able to scareyourself by meeting yourself. Butperhaps occasionally, if the ‘space-timecontinuum’ (whatever…) did glitchslightly, you might appear as a faintimage, which could be the explanation

of ghosts. Could itbe that ghosts arenot the supposedmanifestations ofdead people fromthe past, but livingpeople from thefuture? Currentlythis is the onlyexplanation thatcan even start tomake a vague bitof sense (however,it doesn’t explainwhy so manyghosts arereported wearingold fashioned

nightshirts and carrying a candle, orrattling about in suits of armour, but amere article cannot explaineverything…)

There is another possible explanation,though it is even more mind-boggling.This assumes that if you go back intothe past and change something, thewhole world – well the whole Universe –splits off and goes down a differentroute. In fact this has even beensuggested as happening every time adecision is made which could have twooutcomes? Yes it means there arecountless trillions of ‘universes’ ‘outthere’ (where ever ‘there’ is?) each witha slightly different you and me, but thenspace is meant to be infinite.

So in our scenario, even if you did goback in time and unfortunately yourgrandfather gets killed again, (it’sgetting somewhat like an episode ofItchy and Scratchy), yes you mightcease to exist in that universe, but youwould continue on in this one, obliviousof the chaos you’ve caused elsewhere.

So far we have only looked at travellingback in time, what about forward? Ofcourse, we are travelling forward in timeat this very moment – at 60 seconds perminute, 60 minutes per hour. (Well weassume we are, there’s nothing actuallyto measure this against)

Here though is yet another veryimportant paradox we must face. On theface of it we can assume that no timetravelling machine has been invented inthe past, otherwise we would alreadyhave time travel. However, we can’t tellabout the future, because it hasn’thappened yet. On the other hand, iftime travelling is invented in the future,surely the one thing they would do istravel into the past, so where are theyall? Stretching this argument to itslogical (?) conclusion, one could saythat time travel will (has?) never beinvented as, however far into the futureis it invented, it would be here today,because if a time traveller from thefuture did travel into their past – and we

Homer Simpson meets another dinosaur - what havoc will this cause inthe future? Mat Irvine

Mat Irvine shows a photograph of his paternal grandfather taken around1920. But no he doesn’t have any plans to build a time machine to provecausality could be a real problem...

SCI-FI FOCUS

40

are assuming the travellers can reactwith their surroundings – they could tellus how to build the machine, or evenhand over the machine they havearrived in. So we are back to thesituation that we would already havetime travel, and currently it doesn’tappear that we have.

However, putting that particular paradoxaside for the moment, let us assumethat, from tomorrow, controlled timetravel is possible. How would thetraveller prove they had done thistravelling? If they couldn’t react withtheir surroundings, what could theybring back to prove it? And even if theycould react with their surroundings andbring something back (or is it‘forward’?), we already have loads ofartefacts from the past, so the firstcomment is likely to be, “So what?”

It doesn’t work with the travel into thefuture either. A sceptic could easilydismiss anything from ‘the future’ as, “Ifit doesn’t exist yet, how can I know it isgoing to exist in the future – and,anyway, what is it?” Even if you couldn’tgrab objects, but only some imagesfrom your travels, the comments herewould be, “Well it’s all CGI out of thecomputer…probably out-takes from thelatest movie.” The suspicion is that themain problem that any first-time timetravellers would have, would be actuallyproving their exploits. This of coursedoes also bring in the intriguing thoughtthat they could already be here, but no-one believes them. A headline in some

red-top newspaper along the lines of, “Iam a traveller from the future,” would bemet with just as much belief as, “WorldWar 2 bomber found on Moon.”(Though it would almost certainlyguarantee them a place on a reality TVshow, and an interview with JonathanRoss…)

And of course, you have to convinceyourself where you are actuallytravelling ‘to’. While it is (reasonably)straightforward to understand that thepast has already happened – so thatthere is something to travel back into –the future surely hasn’t happened yet,so what would we be travelling forwardin? Or – more mind boggling thoughts –maybe the whole of time has alreadyhappened and constantly ‘exists’, andwe normally run along it like a train on arailway track, at the required speed of24 hours a day. So ‘now’ is currentlywhere the train is,and ‘the future’ isalready inexistence furtheralong the track. Sowe could travelforward in time.

This is what H.G.Wells proposed inhis famous bookThe Time Machine.Here, the TimeTraveller explainedthat that ‘time’ waspurely anotherdimension in the

same way as ourdimensions in spaceare – left and right,back and forward, andup and down. Torepeat what was saidin the first of thesearticles (in the firstissue of Voyage),although we are quiteused to giving ourposition in just twodimensions –otherwise known asmap references – youhave to use threemeasurements toprecisely pin-pointyourself, as you may

be up a mountain or down in a cellar atany instance. But although it is fine togive the three ‘spatial’ measurements,“I’m at zero degrees longitude, 51°29’degrees latitude, at about 200 metresaltitude…,” (that’s roughly theGreenwich Observatory in London), itdoesn’t tell anyone ‘when’. For that youneed the ‘fourth dimension’ of ‘time’ andsomething along the lines of, “at Noonon 7 July 2005…,” because by 1o’clock, you may very well have walkeddown the hill to the Maritime Museum.Wells used this argument throughoutThe Time Machine to allow the Travellerto travel both into the future and past,and here he was only using the ‘time’dimension as, unlike The Doctor’sTARDIS, the machine didn’t actuallymove in space – it always sat in theTime Traveller’s workshop! Or to beslightly more precise, the position theworkshop existed at that point in time,

Greenwich Observatory Dome. To give an exactpoint of reference you need four dimensions –three in space and one in time - after all, within thenext minute, you may have walked down the hillfrom the Greenwich Observatory

Model of ‘The Time Machine’ as envisaged for the movie version of theH.G. Wells novel

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as it wasn’t there in the past and thebuilding had collapsed in the future…

It will be extremely interesting (and thatis an understatement) to discover if timetravel is possible. However, one thingwill be absolutely sure. If and when that‘time’ ever occurs, it would make thewhole of time – past, present and future– irrelevant, as anything could bechanged. Wars could be averted,accidents reversed, and the NationalLottery totally impossible. “Just nippingout to the local time machine dear, tosee what tomorrow’s draw numbers willbe…”

‘Time Travel Lottery - A Winner Every Time’ - will probably be very popular with the punters - thoughnot for the organisers.

Maybe ‘time’ runs like a well-oiled railway - and ‘time’ is always here? The train we are on is ‘now’, ‘the present’, ‘this instant in time’ and we are travellingaway from the ‘past’ and towards ‘the future’?

A timely reminder of some references oftime…

The Time Machine: H.G.Wells – noveland movieDoctor Who – TV series, movies, books,games and loads more besides

The Time Tunnel – TV seriesSeven Days – TV seriesStar Trek - TV series and movies - notspecifically involving time travelling assuch, but there have been severalnotable stories using the themeincluding - The City on the Edge ofForever (Classic Star Trek); Time’s

Arrow (Star Trek: The Next Generation),Trials and Tribulations (Star Trek: DeepSpace Nine), the last ever episode ofStar Trek: Voyager, and the Star Trek:Enterprise episode, E².

The Final Countdown – movieThe Back to the Future trilogy – moviesThe Terminator series – movies

The Time Ships: Stephen Baxter –novelTimescape: Gregory Benford – novelThe Corridors of Time: Poul Anderson –novelThe Big Time: Fritz Leiber - novelTimes Without Number: John Brunner -novelThe End of Eternity: Isaac Asimov -novelA Tale of Time City: Diane WynneJones – novelElleander Morning: Jerry Yulsman -novel

A Brief History of Time: StephenHawking - non-fictionTime’s Arrow: Huw Price – non-fictionHow to Build a Time Machine: PaulDavies – non-fiction

Thanks to Marion van der Voort foradditional information - especially onthe books.www.atthesignofthedragon.co.uk

42

SOLUTIONS

WHO DID WHAT WHEN

William Herschel Discovered Planet Uranus 1781

Edmund Halley Identified Comet (now known by his name) 1705

Clyde Tombaugh Discovered Planet Pluto 1930

Galileo Galilei Developed the Telescope 1609

Johann Bode Published first atlas of stars visible to the naked eye 1801

Giuseppe Piazzi Identified the first asteroid (which he named Ceres) 1801

Anagram Prose

The UNIVERSE is a COLD andDARK place, but from the safety ofthe ROCKET it all looks beautiful.The EARTH appears BLUE fromSPACE and MARS appears red.The RINGS around SATURN andtails of COMETS are thought to be

made up of ROCK and DUST.

Phrase Drop

PAGE 12 PUZZLES WHO DID WHAT

T H A T ’ S O N E

S M A L L S T E P

F O R A M A N ;

O N E G I A N T

L E A P F O R

M A N K I N D

Can you fit the tiles into the grid so that they make up two sentences about a successful unmanned space mission that’s runningat the moment. Two of the tiles have been entered to help you start. Answer on page 43. Puzzle by Voyage Magazine

An Extra Puzzle; WHERE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM?

T I A N . M O E D N I N E T T I T S L

S S I R A F S P A H U Y S A O N A N D P L A

S O I T S N . T I N C E C T U R O N T H E

H E G E N C A G T R B I

P L A N E T

43

SOLUTIONS

A D S S E B A L P E T G N I K I V

M O T Y H E L R H S N A I T R A M

S R C W R E D E O M A R S I L R A

A S I A W T E D B R S S A L L E H

H U L O N D I A O D N O E L M D F

C M L T X A E S S H E S S A A P R

Y O E L M I L I M S M R U V R L E

D N R S A E E S M A O W R S I A D

O T A U R H R P R O J F E I N N N

N E P L S A H I A O S O B V E E I

I S A O M R N P L L D E R A R T F

A S I H R E D D E R U D E R D M H

M O H T R I C L U S S S C R R A T

A A C I E T S I S R A H T E E R A

R H S N O M S U P M Y L O D D S P

S C S R A M E R Y G R A R E T A P

GIANT WORD SEARCH PAGE 31

The word RED appears 9 times; the word MARS appears 6 times.The name of the radio play is ‘The War of the Worlds’ and the alien who appears twice is ET

THECASSINISPACECRAFTI

SORBITINGTHEPLANETSA

TURN.HUYGENSLANDEDON

ITSMOONTITAN.

WHERE IN THE SOLARSYSTEM

The Cassini spacecraft is orbiting the planet Saturn. Huygenslanded on its moon Titan.

ON THE COVERPAGE 23

1) Vostok

2) Mercury

3) Salyut

4) Skylab

5) Mariner 9

6) Cassini

7) Messenger

RE-ENTRY: A look back at significant moments in space history

44

Exactly seven years to the dayafter Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, another first wasachieved on the Red Planet, Mars.

On 20 July 1976, the lander of theViking 1 unmanned space probelanded on Mars in an area calledChryse Planitia. It was the firstsuccessful soft landing on Mars andthe cameras soon beamed back thefirst images from the planet’ssurface.

Landing Site

The landing site had been chosenafter studying photographs from aprevious orbiting mission calledMariner 9 and the ground lookedsmooth enough to land on fromthose images. However, one of thefirst jobs for Viking 1 was to studythe landing site in more detail. Whenthe new images were received,scientists were shocked to see justhow rough the original landing sitewas and realised they would have tochange it.

Rocky Horror

Eventually a new site was found andthe Viking 1 lander separated fromits orbiter and landed. But it was still

VIKINGS INVADE MARS

very lucky when it did, becausewhen the first pictures came backfrom the surface of Mars, theyshowed a rock-strewn landscape.The lander had touched down barely10 m from a boulder big enough todestroy it if it had hit.

Science on the Surface

The main objectives of the mission,apart from the successful landing,were to study the planet. The orbiterhalf of the vehicle took more photosof the planet, but this time it hadmuch better cameras than theMariner 9 mission carried and wasable to take pictures in much moredetail. The lander carried a wholerange of science instruments and its

job was to take pictures from thesurface, as well as studying therocks and soil, sampling theatmosphere and searching forevidence of life on Mars.

Almost all the experiments workedsuccessfully on Viking 1, apart froma seismometer to detect the Marsquakes. The instruments soon gavescientists lots of valuable informationabout conditions on Mars. Viking 1was joined on the surface by Viking2 in September 1976 and kepttransmitting right up to November1982 when a faulty command fromground control resulted in loss ofcontact with the lander. The orbiterhad run out of attitude control fuel onAugust 1980 and shut down.

The Wide Pink YonderOne of the biggest surprises that the Viking 1mission revealed was the colour of the sky onMars. Because there is a lot of dust in theatmosphere of Mars, it has the effect ofscattering the weak sunlight that reaches theplanet. When Viking 1 sent back its first colourimages, the scientists found that thisscattering effect caused the sky to glow pinkrather than blue. Add to that the red colour ofthe soil and you realise that Mars is a verydifferent place to our home planet Earth.

Life on MarsOne of the dangers of sending missions to Mars is the possibility ofcontamination from Earth life forms. Mars does have the potential to supportlife, but in order to try to prove that life may have existed there, it is importantthat we do not let our spacecraft contaminate the planet. After all, if we findsigns of life on Mars but we don’t take proper precautions, who can saywhether we didn’t bring that life from Earth, in the form of bacteria.

The best way to avoid possible contamination is to sterilise the spacecraft.Viking 1 was sterilised in an oven at 113°C for 40 hours before it was sent onits way to Mars.

1

WHERE TO GOThis map of the UK is going to build into a guide to all the places that you can go to experience space and sciencedisplays, shows or interactive days out. It only has a few entries at the moment, so we’d like your help to fill it up. Ifyou or your school have been to a science centre near you, tell us about it and we’ll add it to the map.

If you are a space or science centre, we want to let people know you are there, so send us some details about yourcentre to let schools and students know what you do. We will be featuring different centres in future issues.

Aberdeen: Satrosphere01224 640340 www.satrosphere.net

Edinburgh: Royal Observatory0131 668 8405 www.roe.ac.uk/vc

Newcastle: Discovery Museum0121 232 6789 www.twmuseums.org.uk/discovery

Halifax: Eureka! the Museum for Children01422 330 069 www.eureka.org.uk

Leicester: National Space Centre0870 607 7223 www.spacecentre.co.uk

Norwich: Inspire01603 612612

www.science-project.org/inspire

Hailsham: ObservatoryScience Centre 01323 832731www.the-observatory.org

London: London Planetarium0870 400 3010 www.london-planetarium.comLondon: Royal Greenwich Observatory020 8858 4422 www.rog.nmm.ac.ukLondon: Science Museum0870 870 4868 www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Weymouth: Discovery01305 789 007

www.discoverdiscovery.co.uk

Bristol: At-Bristol0845 345 1235 www.at-bristol.org.uk

Glasgow: Glasgow Science Centre0141 420 5000 www.gsc.org.uk

Cardiff: Techniquest02920 475 475 www.techniquest.org

Oxford: Curioxity01865 247004 www.oxtrust.org.uk/curioxity

Birmingham:Thinktank at Millennium Point0121 202 2222 www.thinktank.ac

Macclesfield: Jodrell Bank01477 571 339 www.jb.man.ac.uk/scicen

Armagh: Armagh Planetarium028 3752 3689wwwarmaghplanet.com

Cornwall: Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station0800 679593 www.goonhilly.bt.com