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АЛМАТИНСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ЭНЕРГЕТИКИ И СВЯЗИ

Кафедра «Иностранные языки»

 

 

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК

Учебное пособие

Астрономия. Космическая техника и технологии

 

Алматы, 2012

 

УДК 802.0:52:629.7 (0758)

ББК 81. Англ. - 923

Английский язык: Астрономия. Космическая техника и технологии

Н90 Учебное пособие /авторы – сост. Нурходжаева Х.А., Сергеева Л.Д.

АУЭС. Алматы, 2012.- 123 с.

 

            ISBN  978-601-7327-10-1

 

Пособие составлено на основе материалов с сайта NASA. Студенты могут ознакомиться с основами астрономии, новейшими разработками в области космических исследований. Данное пособие может быть использовано как для аудиторной работы, так и для самостоятельных занятий английским языком.

Библиогр. – 6 назв.

ББК 81. 2 - 923

 

Рецензенты:  КазУМОиМЯ им. Абылай хана,  канд.филол. наук,  

   профессор М.Р.  Сабитова,         

   канд. филол. наук, доцент У.Б. Серикбаева

 

Печатается по плану издания Министерства образования и науки Республики  Казахстан на 2012 г.

 

ISBN  978-601-7327-10-1

 

 

© НАО «Алматинский университет энергетики и связи», 2012 г.

 

СОСТАВИТЕЛИ: Х.А. Нурходжаева, Л.Д. Сергеева

                Астрономия. Космическая техника и технологии  .-Алматы, АУЭС, 2012.

 

Учебное пособие адресовано студентам специальностей, 5В074600 – Космическая техника и технологии. Пособие составлено на основе материалов с сайта NASA. Студенты могут ознакомиться с основами астрономии, новейшими разработками в области космических исследований. Данное пособие может быть использовано как для аудиторной работы, так и для самостоятельных занятий английским языком.

Учебное пособие рекомендуется к изданию.

 

© НАО «Алматинский университет энергетики и связи»,  на 2012г.

 

Предисловие

 

         Вашему вниманию предлагается пособие для высших учебных заведений для специальности 5В074600 «Космическая техника и технологии». Основная цель пособия заключается в формировании у студентов профессиональной компетенции, структурными компонентами которой являются: коммуникативная, лингвистическая, речевая, социокультурная, социальная, стратегическая, дискурсивная и предметная обеспечивающая специалисту способность к успешной профессиональной деятельности.

         Пособие поделено на 12 уроков (Units), каждый посвящен определенной теме. Первые 6 уроков знакомят обучаемых с астрономией: с областями астрономии и выдающимися учеными, галактиками и звездами, солнечная система, созвездия, астероиды и кометы, атмосфера.  Следующие 6 уроков – с исследованиями космоса: с историей и видами телескопов, ракет, многоразовых космических челноков и аппаратов для исследования других планет; космическими проектами NASA и людьми, исследующими космос.

Каждый урок состоит из оригинальных текстов для ознакомительного, изучающего, поискового чтения по специальности; упражнений, направленных на формирования умений и навыков: извлечения из большого по объему материала информацию заданного содержания в устной и письменной форме; построения монологических и диалогических высказываний различных типов (описание, повествование, рассуждение, доказательство), участие в дискуссии на научные и профессиональные темы. Упражнений для аудирования, направленных на формирования умений и навыков понимания содержания аутентичных текстов научного и профессионального содержания, умений вычленять основную информацию во время прослушивания и применять ее в устной и письменной речи. Упражнений в письменной речи, направленных на формирования умений и навыков кратко излагать содержание прочитанного/прослушанного текста, фиксировать необходимую информацию, обобщать информацию, полученную из разных источников в русле выбранного профиля.

Тексты пособия отобраны с сайтов NASA и других научных сайтов и не подвергались никакой адаптации. Последовательность текстовых материалов имеет логическую направленность, соответствующую структуре специальности «Космическая техника и технологии».

Все замечания и пожелания, направленные на устранение недостатков данного пособия, будут приняты авторами с благодарностью.

Авторы выражают свою особую признательность рецензентам: к.ф.н., доценту КазНТУ Козлову В.С. и к.ф.н., доценту АУЭС Серикбаевой У.Б.

 

Unit 1

         What is Astronomy 

          Match the words and definitions:   

Word	Definition
1 astronomy	a) a cylindrical device for making objects that are far away look nearer and larger, using a combination of lenses, or lenses and curved mirrors
2 universe	b) a cloud of gas or dust in space, appearing either bright or dark
3 telescope	c) in or relating to the sky, heaven or space
4 gravity	d) a small spacecraft, with no one travelling in it, sent into space to make measurements and send back information to scientists on Earth
5 nebulae	e) the large explosion that many scientists believe created the universe
6 celestial	f) relating to light or the ability to see
7 space probe	g) a region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape
8 black hole	h) the scientific study of the universe and of objects which exist naturally in space, such as the moon, the sun, planets and stars
9 Big Bang	i) the force which attracts objects towards one another, especially the force that makes things fall to the ground
10 optical	j) space and everything that exists, especially all physical matter, including all the stars, planets, galaxies, etc. in space

 

Text 1A

 

Pioneers of Astronomy

 

Astronomy, derived from the Greek words for star law, is the scientific study of all objects beyond our world. It is also the process by which we seek to understand the physical laws and origins of our universe.

Over the centuries there have been countless innovators that have contributed to the development and advancement of astronomy. Some of these key individuals include:

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543): He was a Polish physician and lawyer by trade, but is now regarded as the father of the current heliocentric model of the solar system.

Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601): A Danish nobleman, Tycho designed and built instruments of greater power and resolution than anything that had been developed previously. He used these instruments to chart the positions of planets and other celestial objects with such great precision, that it debunked many of the commonly held notions of planetary and stellar motion.

Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630): A student of Tycho’s, Kepler continued his work, and from that discovered three laws of planetary motion:

1) Planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse.

2) The orbital speed of a planet varies so that a line joining the Sun and

the planet will sweep over equal areas in equal time intervals.

3) The amount of time a planet takes to orbit the Sun is related to its orbit’s size, such that he period, P, squared is proportional to the semi-major axis, a, cubed.

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642): While Galileo is sometimes credited (incorrectly) with being the creator of the telescope; he was the first to use the telescope to make detailed studies of heavenly bodies. He was the first to conclude that the Moon was likely similar in composition to the Earth and that the Sun’s surface changed (i.e., the motion of sunspots on the Sun’s surface). He was also the first to see four of Jupiter’s moons, and the phases of Venus. Ultimately it was his observations of the Milky Way, specifically the detection of countless stars that shocked the scientific community.

Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727): Considered one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Newton not only deduced the law of gravity, but realized the need for a new type of mathematics (calculus) to describe it. His discoveries and theories dictated the direction of science for more than 200 years, and truly ushered in the era of modern astronomy.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955): Einstein is famous for his development of general relativity, a correction to Newton’s law of gravity. But, his relation of energy to mass (E=mc2) is also important to astronomy, as it is the basis for which we understand how the Sun, and other stars, fuse hydrogen into Helium for energy.

Edwin Hubble (1889 - 1953): During his career, Hubble answered two of the biggest questions plaguing astronomers at the time. He determined that so-called spiral nebulae were, in fact, other galaxies, proving that the Universe extends well beyond our own galaxy. Hubble then followed up that discovery by showing that these other galaxies were receding at speeds proportional to their distances away from us.

Stephen Hawking (1942 - ): Very few scientists alive today have contributed more to the advancement of their fields than Stephen Hawking. His work has significantly increased our knowledge of black holes and other exotic celestial objects. Also, and perhaps more importantly, Hawking has made significant strides in advancing our understanding of the Universe and its creation.

 

Which scientist:

1) not only deduced the law of gravity, but realized the need for a new type

of mathematics (calculus) to describe it.

2) determined that so-called spiral nebulae were, in fact, other galaxies,

proving that the Universe extends well beyond our own galaxy.

3) is now regarded as the father of the current heliocentric model of the

solar system.

4) is famous for his development of general relativity, a correction to his law

of gravity.

5) continued his work, and from that discovered three laws of planetary motion.

6) has made significant strides in advancing our understanding of the

Universe and its creation.

7) designed and built instruments of greater power and resolution than

anything that had been developed previously.

 

Text 1B

 

Branches of Astronomy

 

There are really two main branches of astronomy: optical astronomy (the study of celestial objects in the visible band) and non-optical astronomy (the use of instruments to study objects in the radio through gamma-ray wavelengths).

Optical Astronomy: Today, when we think about optical astronomy, we most instantly visualize the amazing images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), or close up images of the planets taken by various space probes. What most people don’t realize though is that these images also yield volumes of information about the structure, nature and evolution of objects in our Universe.

Non-optical Astronomy: While optical telescopes are sometimes considered the only pure instruments for doing astronomy research, there are other types of observatories that make significant contributions to our understanding of the Universe. These instruments have allowed us to create a picture of our universe that spans the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from low energy radio signals, to ultra high energy gamma-rays. They give us information about the evolution and physics of some of the Universe’s most dynamic treasures, such as neutron stars and black holes. And it is because of these endeavors that we have learned about the structure of galaxies including our Milky Way.

 

                                            Subfields of Astronomy

                                                             

There are so many types of objects that astronomers study, that it is convenient to break astronomy up into subfields of study.

Planetary Astronomy: Researchers in this subfield focus their studies on planets, both within and outside our solar system, as well as objects like asteroids and comets.

Solar Astronomy: While the sun has been studied for centuries, there is still a significant amount of active research conducted. Particularly, scientists are interested in learning how the Sun changes and trying to understand how these changes affect the Earth.

Stellar Astronomy: Simply, stellar astronomy is the study of stars, including their creation, evolution and death. Astronomers use instruments to study different objects across all wavelengths, and use the information to create physical models of the stars.

Galactic Astronomy: The Milky Way Galaxy is a very complex system of stars, nebulae, and dust. Astronomers study the motion and evolution of the Milky Way in order to learn how galaxies are formed.

Extragalactic Astronomy: Astronomers study other galaxies in the Universe to learn how galaxies are grouped and interact on a large scale.

Cosmology: Cosmologists study the structure of the Universe in order to understand its creation. They typically focus on the big picture, and attempt to model what the Universe would have looked like only moments after the Big Bang.

 

Astrophysics

Astrophysics is the application of physical and chemical knowledge to an understanding of the nature of celestial objects and the physical processes that control their formation, evolution, and emission of radiation. In addition, the gases and dust particles around and between the stars have become the subjects of much research. Study of the nuclear reactions that provide the energy radiated by stars has shown how the diversity of atoms found in nature can be derived from a universe that, following the first few minutes of its existence, consisted only of hydrogen, helium, and a trace of lithium.

Radio astronomy

Matter in the universe emits radiation (energy) from all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, the range of wavelengths produced by the interaction of electricity and magnetism. The electromagnetic spectrum includes light waves, radio waves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet radiation, X rays, and gamma rays.

Radio astronomy is the study of celestial objects by means of the radio waves they emit. Radio waves are the longest form of electromagnetic radiation. Some of these waves measure up to 6 miles (more than 9 kilometers) from peak to peak. Objects that appear very dim or are invisible to our eye may have very strong radio waves.

Radio astronomy was pioneered by Karl Gothe Jansky, who in1932 first detected radio waves from a cosmic source - in the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy. Gote Reber (a ham radio operator) made the first true radio telescope (usiing a 32-foot diameter parabolic dish to focus the radio waves) after reading of Jansky's discoveries.

 

Which science:

1) studies  planets, both within and outside our solar system, as well as

objects like asteroids and comets.

2) studies of celestial objects by means of the radio waves they emit.

3) studies the motion and evolution of the Milky Way in order to learn how

galaxies are formed.

4) studies of stars, including their creation, evolution and death.

5) studies the structure of the Universe in order to understand its creation.

6) studies other galaxies in the Universe to learn how galaxies are grouped

and interact on a large scale.

7) studies how the Sun changes and tries to understand how these changes

affect the Earth.

8 ) is the application of physical and chemical knowledge to an understanding

of the nature of celestial objects and the physical processes that control their formation, evolution, and emission of radiation.

 

Listening

What is Astronomy?

You are going to listen to Carolyn Collins Petersen, The Spacewriter, discusses the science of astronomy and a few of the other science disciplines that cross paths with astronomy: physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. For questions 1-10 complete the sentence:

1) Astronomers study the characteristics of ___ in the universe.

2) Astronomy plays an interesting role in science – and, in fact it’s often

referred to as a ___science.

3) Astrophysics helps us figure out the processes that cause ___to shine the

way they do.

4) The colors and brightnesses – called luminosities – tell you something

about the ___of the stars, and maybe also about their distances.

5) The information you get by looking at Mercury in that reflected light tells

you that some parts of its ___are volcanic in origin.

6) Breaking light apart into its component wavelengths is called

spectroscopy, and it takes astronomy squarely into the realm of ___.

7) If you take a spectrum of a star or galaxy and compare it to the known

fingerprints of chemical elements, you pretty quickly discover what those objects are ___.

8) People who study the same things at other planets are called ___scientists.

9) Those questions are at the core of a science called astrobiology – the

search for life and the conditions for life — elsewhere in the ___.

10) Science is not a compartmentalized political unit – it’s a living, breathing

process of understanding the cosmos – and ___is an integral part of it.

 

Speaking:

Work in pairs and answer the questions:

Student A

1 What does the word “astronomy” means?

2 What instrument did Tycho Brahe use to chart the positions of planets and other celestial objects with such great precision, that it debunked many of the commonly held notions of planetary and stellar motion?

3 What is the first Kepler’s law of planetary motion?

4 Which scientist was the first to see four of Jupiter’s moons, and the phases of Venus?

5 Whose discoveries and theories dictated the direction of science for more than 200 years, and truly ushered in the era of modern astronomy?  

6 Whose relation of energy to mass (E=mc2) is also important to astronomy, as it is the basis for which we understand how the Sun, and other stars, fuse hydrogen into Helium for energy?

7 Who shown that these other galaxies were receding at speeds proportional to their distances away from us?

8 Whose work has significantly increased our knowledge of black holes and other exotic celestial objects?

Student B

1 How many main branches of astronomy do you know?

2 What does Optical Astronomy study?

3 What does Non-optical Astronomy study?

4 How long has the sun been studied for centuries?

5 What do Astronomers use instruments to in Stellar Astronomy?

6 What does the Milky Way Galaxy consist of?

7 What do Cosmologists typically focus on?

8 What has study of the nuclear reactions that provide the energy radiated by stars shown?

 

Unit 2

Galaxies and Stars

Text 2A

 

Galaxies   

      

Overview

 

A galaxy is a massive complex or system of stars, remnants of stars, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter. Some include multiple star systems, clusters, and interstellar clouds. Galaxies are bound by gravity and contain from millions to trillions of stars. The size of some galaxies are measured in units called parsecs, others are measured in light years. One parsec is equivalent to about 19 trillion miles (31 trillion kilometers). An average galaxy may extend from 1,000 - 100,000 parsecs. A light year is the distance that light travels in an Earth year. Light travels at nearly 300,000 km per second (180,000 miles). If you were to calculate the actual size of a galaxy using numbers, rather than the aforementioned units, the resulting figure would be impossible to understand or conceptualize. Galaxies are usually separated by spaces that extend over millions of parsecs. These vast spaces are called intergalactic spaces. Despite the vast distances between them, galaxies are often organized into clusters and super clusters. Clusters and super clusters are then organized into sheets and filaments. A filament, defined as structures that form the boundaries between large voids in the universe, are the largest known structures in the universe.

 

 

Types of Galaxies

 

Galaxies are usually classified              according to their shape.

Elliptical galaxies are round with a   smooth, elliptical shape. It is also called  an "E" or "E-type" galaxy. They vary greatly in size; the largest galaxies that we  can see are elliptical. Unlike spiral  galaxies, elliptical galaxies are generally  yellow-red in color, do not have spiral  arms, and contain little interstellar dust or  gas. They are generally found in rich  clusters of galaxies.  

 

 

Spiral galaxies are galaxies with a central, dense area and spiraling arms (which are often sites of star formation). These common galaxies have two major parts:

- a central, flat disk containing a dense cloud of interstellar matter and young star clusters (mostly on the arms)

- a central bulge (or nucleus) containing older stars

There are two types of spiral galaxies, "S" (normal spiral) and the less common "SB" (barred spiral, with an elongated center). The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) are two of a multitude of known spiral galaxies.

Peculiar galaxies are shaped irregularly, likely because of the gravitational pull of a nearby galaxy. Scientists estimate the presence of 100 billion galaxies in the universe.

Dark Matter

About 90% of the mass of an average galaxy is made of up mysterious, invisible masses called dark matter. Dark matter is hypothetical; its actual existence is simply scientific and mathematical hypotheses. Only its gravitational effects on visible objects can be observed (such as the rotational curves of spiral galaxies). Some scientists think dark matter is concentrated in huge masses such as black holes.

Our Galaxy

Our solar system lies within the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy contains over 200 billion stars and has a diameter of up to 120,000 light years. Our solar system orbits around the Milky Way once every 200-250 million years. You can see the Milky Way galaxy on a clear night. It looks like a milky white band across the night sky. The center of the galaxy is located in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. The Milky Way is thought to be nearly as old as the universe itself. Some estimates age the galaxy at over 13 billion years. It is part of a cluster of galaxies known as the Local Group. Two smaller galaxies and a number of dwarf galaxies actually orbit the Milky Way, the largest of which is called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Considered an irregular galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud is thought to be about 160,000 light years away from the Milky Way. Although our Milky Way is ten times larger, scientists estimate than 10 billion suns could fit in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The galaxy was first observed by explorer Ferdinand Magellan, whom the galaxy is named for and looks like a small night cloud in the southern hemisphere.

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) The existence of dark matter is "hypothetical." What does hypothetical mean in this instance?

a) Possible

b) Calculated

c) Definite

d) Impossible

2) Our galaxy is part of a group of galaxies called the ___.

a)     Large Magellanic Cloud

b)    Milky Way

c)     Local Group

d)    Solar System

3) The Large Magellanic Cloud is a ___ that orbits the ___.

a)     star; Milky Way

b)    star; sun

c)     galaxy; Milky War

d)    galaxy; sun

4) The shape of irregular galaxies is likely caused by the ___ of nearby galaxies.

a)     orbit

b)    gravitational pull

c)     size

d)    rotation

5) Galaxies are measured in units called ___.

a)     meters

b)    miles

c)     dark matter

d)    parsecs

6) Galaxies are normally classified by their ___.

a)     shape

b)    age

c)     stars

d)    size

7) A light year is the ___ in which light travels in one year.

a)     velocity

b)    speed

c)     distance

d)    volume

8) The largest known structures in the universe are called ___.

a)     filaments

b)    sheets

c)     solar systems

d)    galaxies

9) Galaxies are mostly made of ___.

a)     dark matter

b)    constellations

c)     stars

d)    planets

10) Spaces in between galaxies are called ___.

a)     interstellar clouds

b)    intergalactic spaces

c)     solar systems

d)    clusters

 

Vocabulary

Find words or phrases in the article that mean the following. You’ve been given the first letter to help you.

1 G___ is an enormous collection of a few million to trillions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity.

2 The size of some galaxies is measured in units called p___.

3 A l___ y___ is the distance that light travels in an Earth year.

4 A f___ are structures that form the boundaries between large voids in the universe.

5 About 90% of the mass of an average galaxy is made of up mysterious, invisible masses called d___ m___.

 

Text 2B

 

The Milky Way

 

The Greek philosopher Democritus (450–370 BC) proposed that the bright band on the night sky known as the Milky Way might consist of distant stars. Aristotle (384–322 BC), however, believed the Milky Way to be caused by "the ignition of the fiery exhalation of some stars which were large, numerous and close together" and that the "ignition takes place in the upper part of the atmosphere, in the region of the world which is continuous with the heavenly motions." The Neoplatonist philosopher Olympiodorus the Younger (c. 495–570 AD) criticized this view, arguing that if the Milky Way were sublunary it should appear different at different times and places on the Earth, and that it should have parallax, which it does not. In his view, the Milky Way was celestial. This idea would be influential later in the Islamic world.

The Arabian astronomer, Alhazen (965–1037), made the first attempt at observing and measuring the Milky Way's parallax, and he thus "determined that because the Milky Way had no parallax, it was very remote from the Earth and did not belong to the atmosphere." The Persian astronomer Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973–1048) proposed the Milky Way galaxy to be "a collection of countless fragments of the nature of nebulous stars." The Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah ("Avempace", d. 1138) proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars that almost touch one another and appear to be a continuous image due to the effect of refraction from sublunary material, citing his observation of the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars as evidence of this occurring when two objects are near. The Syrian-born Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (1292–1350) proposed the Milky Way galaxy to be "a myriad of tiny stars packed together in the sphere of the fixed stars".

Actual proof of the Milky Way consisting of many stars came in 1610 when Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and discovered that it is composed of a huge number of faint stars. In 1750 Thomas Wright, in his An original theory or new hypothesis of the Universe, speculated (correctly) that the galaxy might be a rotating body of a huge number of stars held together by gravitational forces, akin to the solar system but on a much larger scale. The resulting disk of stars can be seen as a band on the sky from our perspective inside the disk. In a treatise in 1755, Immanuel Kant elaborated on Wright's idea about the structure of the Milky Way.

From the Earth, our Milky Way Galaxy is visible as a milky band that stretches across the night sky. It is easier to see when you are far from bright city lights.

The first attempt to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun in it was carried out by William Herschel in 1785 by carefully counting the number of stars in different regions of the sky. He produced a diagram of the shape of the galaxy with the solar system close to the center. Using a refined approach, Kapteyn in 1920 arrived at the picture of a small (diameter about 15 kiloparsecs) ellipsoid galaxy with the Sun close to the center. A different method by Harlow Shapley based on the cataloguing of globular clusters led to a radically different picture: a flat disk with diameter approximately 70 kiloparsecs and the Sun far from the center. Both analyses failed to take into account the absorption of light by interstellar dust present in the galactic plane, but after Robert Julius Trumpler quantified this effect in 1930 by studying open clusters, the present picture of our galaxy, the Milky Way, emerged.

 

        

Answer the questions:

1) What did the Greek philosopher Democritus (450–370 BC) propose?

2) What did Aristotle believe in?

3) What idea philosopher Olympiodorus the Younger would be influential later in the Islamic world?

4) Who made the first attempt at observing and measuring the Milky Way's parallax?

5) Who proposed the Milky Way galaxy to be "a collection of countless fragments of the nature of nebulous stars"?

6) Who proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars that almost touch one another and appear to be a continuous image due to the effect of refraction from sublunary material, citing his observation of the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars as evidence of this occurring when two objects are near?

7) Who proposed the Milky Way galaxy to be "a myriad of tiny stars packed together in the sphere of the fixed stars"?

8) When did actual proof of the Milky Way consisting of many stars come?

9) What did Thomas Wright, in his An original theory or new hypothesis of the Universe, speculate in 1750?

10) Who elaborated on Wright's idea about the structure of the Milky Way?

11) When was the first attempt to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun in it carried out?

 12) Who in 1920 arrived at the picture of a small (diameter about 15 kiloparsecs) ellipsoid galaxy with the Sun close to the center?

13 What was a different method by Harlow Shapley based on?

 

Listening

“How did the Milky Way get its name?”

We are at Space Place Musings. We are going to listen to New Millennium Program with Diane Fisher. We are here with Dr. Marc Rayman, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to ask him a question from one of our many Space Place partners across the U.S. For questions 1-9 complete the sentence:

1) A galaxy is a big collection of stars, and ours has a few hundred billion of them, including the Sun. There are about ___times more stars in our galaxy than there are people on Earth.

2) Even traveling at the speed of light, it would take about years to cross the Milky Way.

3) The universe is far, far larger than the Milky Way. Our galaxy is simply one of hundreds of billions in the known universe. A galaxy like ours—as enormous as it is—is but a tiny __of stars in the vast ocean of the cosmos.

4) Many of the stars probably have planets orbiting them. The galaxy also includes clouds of gas and dust, some of which are in the process of forming new stars and planets. We’ve talked about that in other Space Place Musings. And, most of all, the galaxy holds a large amount of what astronomers call ___.

5) Dark matter is a mysterious substance that we can’t see, but we know it exists because of how its gravity affects the stars we can see. Another strange object lurks at the center of the Milky Way. It’s a tremendous ___, perhaps 4 million times more massive than the Sun.

6) We live at a safe distance. Our solar system is about half way from the center to the outer edge, and it takes light ___ years to cross that distance.

7) If you could look at our galaxy from the outside, you would mostly see the spiral arms and the bright ball of stars at the center. It might look almost like a starfish with its arms curved around in one direction. Most of the stars, including our Sun, and most of the gas and dust are in those ___.

8) The ancient Greeks had plenty of dark skies. And they had a myth that this white band was milk left in the sky by the goddess Hera. In fact, the word “galaxy” comes from the Greek word for ___.

9) The Milky Way is the shaded band cutting across the sky. During the summer and fall months, you may see a grouping of stars in the constellation Sagittarius that resembles a ___, and whenever you see that, you can look for the Milky Way rising from the spout like steam.

 

	Stars: Cloze Activity Fill in the blanks below

Word Bank:

light-years star helium billions Sun

galaxies shortest heat nuclear two

Milky Way elliptical gravitational atoms years

Each ___in the sky is an enormous glowing ball of gas. The closest star to us

is the ___our Sun is a medium-sized star. Other than the Sun, the closest star is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.3 ___from us.

Stars can live for ___ of years. A star is born when an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas collapses until it is hot enough to burn nuclear fuel (producing tremendous amounts ___ and radiation). As the nuclear fuel runs out (in about 5 billion ___), the star expands while the core contracts; it becomes a giant star that eventually explodes and turns into a dim, cool object (a black dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, depending on its initial mass). The largest stars have the ___ life span (still billions of years); more massive stars burn hotter and faster than their smaller counterparts (like the Sun).

Stars are giant ___ reactors. In the center of stars, ___ are taken apart by tremendous atomic collisions that alter the atomic structure and release an enormous amount of energy. This makes stars hot and bright. In most stars, the primary reaction converts hydrogen atoms into ___ atoms, releasing an enormous amount of energy.

In the universe, most stars occur in groups of at least ___ stars. Two stars that are locked in an ___ orbit around their center of mass (their barycenter) are called a binary star system. About half of all stars are in a binary star system.

There are larger groups of stars, called clusters that are relatively unorganized collections of stars. Huge, organized collections of stars are called ___. Our Solar System is located in the ___ Galaxy, a spiral galaxy. All groups of stars are held together by ___ forces.

 

Discussion Questions

 

Unit 3

Solar System

Text 3 A

 

Soaring Through Our Solar System

 

By Laura G. Smith

 

 

Five, four, three, two, one... BLAST OFF! Come along as we explore our solar system! If we were flying high above the Earth, what would you see? The biggest, brightest thing you would see is the sun. You would also see many objects traveling around the sun, including the Earth and its moon!

The sun, planets, and moons are all part of our solar system. The sun is a huge star in the middle of the solar system. It is the only star we can see during the day. The sun is much brighter than the stars we see at night, because it is much closer to the Earth. It is made of gases that are released in the form of light and heat.

The planets are all different sizes. Pluto, the smallest planet, is tinier than the Earth's moon. Jupiter is the largest planet. It is eleven times wider than the Earth! All nine of the planets are much smaller than the sun. If you had a hollow ball the size of the sun, you could fit one million balls the size of the Earth inside it!

               All of the planets in our solar system move around the sun in an oval path called an orbit. This path is shaped something like an egg. The sun has a strong force that pulls all of the planets toward it. This force, called gravity, is what makes the planets stay in their orbits. As each planet orbits the sun, it is also spinning around like a top. This spinning is called rotation. Each planet rotates at a different speed. It takes Jupiter less than 10 hours to rotate one time, but it takes Venus 243 days!

The planets can be divided into two groups. The first group is called the inner planets. The second group is the outer planets. The inner planets-Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars-are smaller and are made of mostly rock and iron. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune make up the outer planets, which are much larger. They are made mostly of hydrogen, helium, and ice. Pluto is the smallest planet and the farthest from Earth. Because it is so far away, scientists don't know very much about it. Some scientists think it shouldn't even be included as one of the nine planets.

There are more than 120 moons that orbit the planets in our solar system. Some planets, like the Earth, only have one moon. Other planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, have as many as 30 moons traveling around them!

Besides the nine planets and their moons, there are thousands of other, smaller objects in our solar system. These are small chunks of rocks called asteroids. The tiniest asteroids are less than a mile wide. The largest is over 600 miles wide.

               Small chunks of iron and rock that break away from asteroids are called meteoroids. Many meteoroids fall close to the Earth. Most of them burn up before they reach the Earth's surface. Meteoroids that fall through the sky like streaks of light are called meteors or "shooting stars." When a meteoroid is found on the Earth's surface, it is called a meteorite. Scientists can study meteorites to learn important facts about our solar system.

Comets are another part of our solar system. They travel around the sun just like the planets. A comet looks like a fuzzy star with a long tail. It is made of frozen gases, ice, and bits of dust. Every comet takes a different amount of time to make a full orbit. One famous comet called "Halley's Comet" takes about 77 years to orbit once around the sun.

When the telescope was invented in the early 1600's, scientists began to learn much more about the sun, planets, moons, asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that make up our solar system. A long time ago, before we had telescopes, people thought the Earth was in the centre of space and that the sun and other stars orbited around it!

Today, with the help of spaceships and other equipment, man is learning even more about our amazing solar system!

Choose the correct answer:

1) The planets in our Solar System orbit around the ___.

         a) Sun

         b) Moon

         c) Mars

         d) Earth     

         2) The Sun is the brightest star because ___.

         a) it is the closest star to Earth

         b) it has the most gases

         c) it is biggest star in the sky

         d) it is the hottest star

         3)The planets travel around the Sun in an oval path called an ___.

         a) eggshell

         b) oddball

         c) orbit

         d) asteroid

         4) A strong force called ___ pulls the planets toward the Sun.

         a) energy

         b) gravity

         c) rotation

         d) motion

         5) Most of the planets are about the same size as the Sun.

         a) True

         b) False

         6) The outer planets are made mostly of ___.

         a) rocks and iron

         b) water and minerals

         c) hydrogen, helium and ice

         d) dust particles

         7) When a meteoroid is found on the Earth’s surface, it is called a ___.

         a) comet

         b) meteor

         c) asteroid

         d) meteorite

         8) In the early 1600’s, an important invention was made that helped scientists learn much more about the Solar System. This invention was ___.

         a) the telescope

         b) a space ship

         c) Halley’s Comet

         d) a meteorite

 

         Answer the questions:

         1) If we were flying high above the Earth, what would you see?

         2) What is the Sun?

         3) What is the Sun made of?

         4) What are the smallest and the biggest planets?

         5) Do all planets rotate at the same speed?

         6) What are inner planets made of?

         7) Does each planet have the same quantity of Moons?

         8) What object is called “asteroid”?

         9) Do many meteoroids fall to the Earth?

         10) What does comet look like?

         11) What is comet made of?

         12) Why did people think the Earth was in the centre of space and that the sun and other stars orbited around it?

 

Vocabulary

Find words or phrases in the article that mean the following. You’ve been given the first letter to help you.

1 O___ is the path taken by an object moving around a larder object in space.

2 F ___ is the power of energy produced by one thing hitting another.

3 M___ is an object similar to a planet that goes around another planet.

4 T ___ is a piece of equipment shaped like a tube that you look through to make distant object look closer and larger.

5 A ___ is small chunks of rocks goes around the Sun, especially between Mars and Jupiter.

 

Text 3B

 

 Our Solar System

 

By Laura G. Smith

 

 If you look up the word "solar" in your dictionary, you'll find its basic definition reads something like: "of the sun," or "relating to the sun." System" is defined as: "a set of things or parts forming a whole." When you consider the meanings of these words, there is indication that the sun plays a major role among this group of celestial bodies we call the "solar system."

               The sun is, in fact, at the centre of this massive system. There are nine major planets and their satellites, asteroids, comets, dust and gases that are continually traveling around the sun. With a mass that is 750 times as great as that of all of the planets in the solar system combined, the sun has a strong gravitational pull that keeps the other objects in orbit around it.

 As the planets revolve around the sun, the sun revolves around the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way, which has a circular shape, is made up of dust, gases, planets, and about 100 billion stars. The sun, planets, and other bodies and gases that make up our solar system are only a small speck in this huge galaxy!

The nine planets of the solar system can be divided into two groups referred to as the inner planets (also called terrestrial planets) and the outer planets (or major planets). The inner planets; Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, are small and are composed of mostly rock and iron. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune make up the outer planets, which are much larger and consist mainly of hydrogen, helium and ice. Because Pluto is the farthest planet from Earth, astronomers know very little about it. Some believe it should not even be considered as one of the major planets. More than 120 natural satellites (also called moons) orbit these various planets in our solar system.

               Asteroids (also called planetoids) are small bodies that orbit the sun, mostly between Mars and Jupiter, in what is referred to as the Asteroid Belt or Main Belt. Astronomers first observed asteroids in the early 1800's with the aid of telescopes. There are more than 20,000 asteroids ranging in size from Ceres, which has a diameter of 623 miles, to bodies that are less than 1 mile in diameter. The Asteroid Belt also includes large amounts of dust that astronomers believe were created by collisions between asteroids.

 Small chunks of iron and rock that break away from colliding asteroids are called meteoroids. Many meteoroids fall to the earth's atmosphere, but most are burned up by friction before they reach the earth's surface.

               Meteoroids that fall through the atmosphere, appearing in the night as streaks of light, are called meteors or "shooting stars." Those that are found on the earth's surface are known as meteorites. As scientists have studied meteorites, they have learned valuable information about the ancient conditions of our solar system. The surfaces of Mercury, Mars, and several satellites of the planets (including the earth's moon) show signs of having been "attacked" by asteroids during the early history of the solar system.

               Some meteors and interplanetary dust (dust that is in between or near the planets) may come from comets. Comets generally have three parts: a solid nucleus or centre, which is often no bigger than a few miles across; a round coma, or head, that surrounds the nucleus and is made up of dust particles and frozen gases; and a long tail of dust and gases that escape from the head. Most comets orbit the sun near the outer edge of the solar system. When a comet is drawn closer to the sun, it releases its dust and gases displaying a spectacular, shining tail. The famously known Halley's Comet appears every 75 years. Its most recent appearance was in 1986.

               Solar wind is another part of the solar system. It is a very thin gas that streams outward constantly from the surface of the sun and through interplanetary space. The particles in solar wind travel past the earth at speeds of about 300 miles per second. This wind also shapes the tails of comets and leaves its particles in the lunar soil. Samples of these particles were brought back from the moon's surface by manned United States Apollo spacecraft.

Since the invention of the telescope, man has greatly increased his knowledge of our solar system. It almost seems silly to realize that ancient astronomers once believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun and all of the other stars revolved around the earth! Little by little astronomers are solving mysteries about the universe. As more powerful tools and techniques are developed, astronomers will become even better equipped to satisfy our curiosity about the amazing stars and planets that decorate our sky.

 

Choose the correct answer:

         1) What holds the planets and other bodies of our Solar System in orbit around the sun?

         a) The gravitation pull of the planets

         b)The gravitation pull of the sun

         c) The rotation of the bodies

         d) The atmosphere

         2) The Sun revolves around the

         a) Solar System

         b) Planets

         c) The universe

         d) Milky Way Galaxy

         3)  ___ is the farthest planet from the Sun.

         a) Pluto

         b) Mercury

         c) Mars

         c) Neptune

         4)  Small bodies that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter are called

         a) asteroids

         b) meteorites

         c) comets

         d) meteors

         5)  Meteors are often called

         a) shining stars

         b) shooting stars

         c) sparkling stars

         d) shrinking stars

         6 )The word “interplanetary” means

         a) inside a planet

         b) in the universe

         c) between the planets

         d) collision of planets

         7) Comets basically have three parts. They are

         a) ___

         b) ___

         c) ___

         8 ) Solar wind occurs as gusts of wind on Sun, similar to strong wind gusts on the Earth

         a) True

         b) Fasle

 

         Answer the questions:

1) What does the word “solar system" mean?

2) What is the mass of Sun?

3) What is the Milky Way made up?

4) How many groups the nine planets of the solar system can be divided into?

5) When do astronomers first observe asteroids?

6) Do all more than 20,000 asteroids have the same size?

7) How can you name small chunks of iron and rock that break away from colliding asteroids?

8) What information did scientists obtain having studies the meteorites?

9) What is happening when a comet is drawn closer to the sun?

10) What do you know about Halley's Comet?

11) How can you name a very thin gas that streams outward constantly from the surface of the sun and through interplanetary space?

12) At what speed does solar wind travel past the earth?

13) Why astronomers can satisfy our curiosity about the amazing stars and planets that decorate our sky?

 

Solar System:          Cloze Activity           Fill in the blanks below

         Word Bank:

asteroid gaseous Mercury rock Sun

ecliptic moons planets Jupiter Mars

Earth center inner Solar System Pluto

 

         Our ___ consists of the sun, eight ___ and a dwarf planet (and their moons), an ___ belt, and many comets and meteors. The Sun is the ___ of our Solar System. The planets, their moons, the asteroids, comets, meteoroids and other rocks and gas all orbit the ___.

The planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the Sun): ___, Venus, Earth, Mars, ___ (the biggest planet in our Solar System), Saturn (with large, orbiting rings), Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet). A belt of asteroids (many minor planets made of rock and metal) orbits between ___ and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the Sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, called the ___ (___ is an exception to this; it has an elliptical orbit that is tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).

The ___ planets (those planets that orbit close to the Sun) are quite different from the outer planets (those planets that orbit far from the Sun). The inner planets are Mercury, Venus, ___, and Mars. They are relatively small, composed mostly of ___, and have few or no moons. The outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet). They are mostly huge, mostly ___, ringed, and have many ___ (again, the exception is Pluto which is small, rocky, dwarf planet with one large moon and two tiny moons).

 

Listening

“Why Do the Planets Orbit the Sun?”

 

You are going to listen to New Millennium Program. Dr. Marc Rayman, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory answers questions from our Space Place museum partners across the nation. Answer the questions:

         1) Why do the planets orbit the Sun?

         2) But if the Sun is pulling the planets, why don't they just fall into the Sun and burn up?

         3) So is this sideways motion partly why we need rockets to launch a spacecraft into orbit?

         4) Why do some spacecraft fly close to Jupiter when it isn’t even close to their destination?

         5) So isn’t there any other way to make spacecraft go faster? Can’t we just “step on the gas” a little more?

 

Unit 4

Constellations

Text 4A

 

The Mighty Hunter in the Winter Sky

 

By Shannon Jackson

 

I'd like to introduce you to one of my special friends. I only see him in the winter—and only when the sky is clear of clouds. He is a mighty hunter who has been placed in the winter sky with his faithful dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor. Orion and his dogs hunt animals that have been placed nearby in the night sky, like Lepus, the rabbit and Taurus, the bull.

There are several stories about this beautiful constellation, but the one I like best is from Greek mythology. This tale has Orion in love with Merope, one of the Seven Sisters who form the Pleiades, but Merope would have nothing to do with him. Orion was killed when he was stung by Scorpius the scorpion. The gods felt sorry for him, though, and placed him in the sky with his two hunting dogs and the animals he liked best to hunt. They also put Scorpius in the sky—but placed him opposite in the sky so that neither would appear at the same time—and Orion would never be stung by Scorpius again.

Orion is probably the second most recognizable pattern of stars in the sky (after the Big Dipper). Finding Orion in the winter sky should be no problem. Look towards the southern horizon for the three bright stars that make up Orion's belt (Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka). The bright star that makes up his left shoulder is Betelgeuse. If Betelgeuse replaced our sun, its size would completely engulf the Earth and extend to Mars. There is an even brighter star in the opposite corner from Betelgeuse, called Rigel. This star is Orion's right knee. Rigel is the brightest star in Orion, and in fact, is the seventh brightest star in the heavens.

Orion is visible from late fall to early spring. When you find Orion, see if you can locate his bow to the right and his raised arm and club to the left. Once you find him, it's fun to try to find his companions—Lepus, Taurus, Canis Major, and Canis Minor. Pleiades is also nearby.

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) You can see Orion

         a) in spring

         b) in summer

         c) in winter

         d) in autumn

2) Orion is the ___ most recognizable pattern of stars in the sky.

a)     first

b)    second

c)     third

d)    fourth

3) Name five constellations that are located close to Orion.

4) What should you look for when first trying to locate Orion?

a)     His club

b)    His belt

c)     His bow

d)    His left shoulder

5) What is the name of the brightest star in Orion?

a)     Betelgeuse

b)    Rigel

c)     Alnitak

d)    Alnilam

 

Text 4 B

 

Locating the Circumpolar Constellations

 

By Shannon Jackson

 

         When you look up at the night sky, what do you see? People from many cultures have looked up at night and used the star groups or constellations as they are called, to tell stories. Simple shepherds more than 5,000 years ago had many stories about the stars and constellations—and they couldn't even read or write. Some of the names sound strange because we still use the names given long ago. Want to learn some tips on how to find some of these pictures in the sky?

Five constellations are always in our northern sky. Other groupings appear seasonally, and then disappear as they fall below the horizon. There are five constellations, however, which seem to circle Polaris (po LAR us), also known as the North Star. The North Star always stays put while the other stars and constellations are moving. Polaris is marking the North Pole for you. Of eighty-eight constellations, five are circling the North Pole—so we say they are circumpolar (circling the pole). And because they are always in our night sky in the northern hemisphere, these five circumpolar are a good starting point in learning the constellations.

Choose a cloudless night. Begin your star connection with the most famous of all star pictures—Ursa Major, The Great Bear. Within this constellation is the Big Dipper. Some people think the Big Dipper is a constellation by itself—in fact; it is a part of this larger constellation Ursa Major.

The Big Dipper will help find all of the other constellations. In the fall, look fairly low in the northern sky for a large dipper with a crooked handle, made up of seven bright stars. These stars make up the main body and tail of the Great Bear. This group of stars is the one picture that looks the most like its name. A dipper is something people used long ago when they would get water from a well or bucket. It is important to remember, the Big Dipper will not be in the same position throughout the year. As the seasons change, it rotates around the sky. In the fall it is full of water. In the winter it looks like an icicle with the handle hanging down, springtime has the Dipper letting the water "rain down on us," and summertime has the Dipper dipping into the bucket to get us a drink on hot days.

 

 

We can use the "pointer stars" of the bowl in the Big Dipper to find Polaris. Pass over the first star you come to and go to the star next in line. This will be Polaris. If you can find Polaris, then you can now find the Little Dipper. It is also made up of seven stars, with the handle bent opposite of the handle in the Big Dipper. Polaris is the last star in the tip of the handle. This is part of the constellation Ursa Minor. Continue in a straight line from Polaris to the tip of the next constellation, Cepheus (SEE fee us). He looks like a house, his pointed hat being the roof. He was an ancient king who played an important part in Greek mythology and the husband of Cassiopeia (cass ee oh PEE a). We'll meet her next.

Cassiopeia is bright and easy to find in the sky. Sometimes she looks like W and sometimes like an M. Cassiopeia was ancient queen. This constellation, the Lady in the chair, is the second most easily found star picture in the sky. All of the five stars are almost the same brightness or magnitude.

 

 

The fifth circumpolar constellation is Draco the Dragon. He is made up of faint stars, almost as if trying to conceal his presence as he lurks in the sky, ready to gobble up the king and queen. The easiest way to find Draco is to start with his tail. Go back to the star we skipped over when we were going from the Big Dipper to Polaris. That star is the tip of Draco's tail. He wraps around the Little Dipper. His head is a group of four stars that are directly in line with the bowl of the Little Dipper. There are fifteen stars in this constellation.

Finding the five circumpolar constellations in the real sky can be a challenge—just remember to start with the Big Dipper and go from there. Before long you will be ready to tackle finding the rest of the eighty-eight constellations.

 

Choose the correct answer:

         1) group of stars are called ___        

a)     constellation

b)    galaxy

c)     Solar System

d)    asteroids         

2) There are five constellations, however, which seem to circle Polaris (po LAR us), also known as ___.

a)     the North Star

b)    Big Dipper

c)     Ursa Minor

d)    Cepheus

3) Another name of constellation Ursa Major is ___

a)     The Great Bear

b)    Big Dipper

c)     Cepheus

d)    the North Star

4) Dipper will be in the same position throughout the year.

a)     True

b)    False

5) Little Dipper  made up of seven stars, with the handle bent opposite of the handle in the ___.

a)     Big Dipper

b)    Cepheus

c)     the North Star

d)    the Dragon

6) Draco the Dragon  is made up of faint stars. His head is a group of stars that are directly in line with the bowl of the Little Dipper.

a)     one

b)    two

c)     three

d)    four

 

Text 4C

 

Pictures in the Stars

 

by Kelly Hashway

 

  

Have you ever stared at the clouds and tried to see pictures in them? Well, this is very similar to how ancient astronomers named the constellations.

Constellations are groups of stars, and today there are 88 officially recognized constellations. Each is named for a figure or object that astronomers saw when they viewed the star group. Most of the constellations are named after characters in mythology. Hercules, Draco, Orion, and The Great Bear are just a few. Others are named after the signs of the zodiac, like Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Scorpios. But the way they were named is very similar. Just like we look at clouds today and see figures and other objects, the astronomers looked at the stars and saw things.

But if you’ve ever played this cloud gazing game with your friends, you’ve probably noticed that different people see different things in the clouds. You may see a bear, while your best friend sees a lion in the very same cloud. This was also the case with naming the constellations. And as a result, the same constellation can be known by different names across the globe.

One of the best-known constellations is the Big Dipper. If you’ve ever seen it in the sky, then you know it looks like a scooper or a dipper. But the ancient Greeks called the Big Dipper “Ursa Major” or “Big Bear”. The ancient Irish and French called the Big Dipper the “Chariot,” and the British referred to it as the “Plough”. So you can see how star gazing and studying the constellations to find shapes in the patterns can cause a single constellation to have multiple names.

 

Another thing that contributes to these differing names is the expansion of the universe. The stars are moving and changing positions in the sky, which can make them, look less like what they were originally named and more like something completely different. The constellation Cassiopeia originally looked like a W, but today it appears to be a squiggly line. Astronomers believe that the Big Dipper will look like a number five in 50,000 years.

Imagine what you will see the next time you look at the stars.

 

Answer the questions:

1) What is a constellation?

a)  a group of stars that are close to Earth

b) a group of stars that is named after a zodiac symbol

c) a group of stars that was named for a figure or object that ancient astronomers saw

d) a group of stars shaped like an unusual animal

2) How many officially recognized constellations are there?

3) Long ago, the constellation Cassiopeia was shaped like a W. Today it is shaped like a squiggly line. Why does it look different today than it did many years ago?

4) Complete each sentence below.

a)     The ancient Greeks thought the Big Dipper looked like a ___.

b)    Long ago, people of Britain thought the Big Dipper looked like a ___.

c)     Ancient Irish and French people thought the big dipper looked like a ___.

 

Listening

“It's a Zoo Up There in Space. Make That a Galaxy Zoo”

Listen to the American radio program. This week, we tell about a project to identify images of one million galaxies that have been captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.  We also tell about the Perseid Meteor Shower. Complete the gaps:

         1) NASA is observing Mars from orbit and also on its surface with the ___.

         2) But there are objects in our solar system that remain mysterious.  These are the asteroids and ___.

         3) Astronomers believe that the force of gravity from ___ prevented the rocky material between it and Mars from forming a planet. 

         4) Ceres shares this classification with two other objects: Pluto and ___. 

         5) Astronomers believe that the outer covering of Ceres may contain up to twenty-five percent ___. 

         6) Vesta was the fourth object of its kind discovered.  Astronomers believe it is covered with rock that melted and then became ___ again

         7) Five percent of all meteorites we find on Earth might be from this one event on ___. 

         8) Dawn is a new kind of ___. 

         9) Dawn's engines use what is called an ion propulsion ___.

         10) Dawn's eyes are two cameras that are exactly alike.  They can measure light in seven different ___. 

         11) Researchers spend millions of dollars on equipment and tools they need to observe the ___.

         12) The comet takes about ___ years to go around the sun, and leaves dust in its path.  

         13) People in big cities will be able to see the brightest meteors. But many, many more will be visible in the darkness of the countryside. The view this year will be especially good, because there will be very little ___.     

         14) Earth grazers are meteors that show up on the horizon and then trail overhead. A NASA official described them as “long, slow and ___.”

         15) Professional astronomers have collected pictures of one million galaxies in our universe.  These pictures came from a project called the Sloan Digital ___ Survey. 

         16) Astronomers want people around the world to help look at the pictures of the galaxies on a Web site and classify them into different kinds.  All you need is a computer with connection to the Internet. This project is called ___.

         17) Scientists say that knowing how many of each kind of galaxy there are will help them understand more about our universe.  The information will help answer questions about how galaxies are made and how they ___. 

        

Unit 5

 

Planets and the Sun

 

Start thinking!

          1What planet is the closest to the Sun?       

          2 What planet is the largest in Solar System?

          3 What planet is the farthest planet from the Sun?

          4 Which one is called “red planet”?

        

Label the Solar System Diagram:

 

 

Reading 1

Read the article about planets and check your diagram.

 

Text 5A

 

Planets

 

MERCURY:  planet Closest to the Sun

Temperature variations on Mercury are the most extreme in the solar system ranging from –170ғ C (–270ғ F) to 430ғ C (800ғ F). Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system. Only Pluto is smaller.  Mercury is about the same size as our Moon.  It is very close to the Sun.  Mercury travels around the Sun faster than any other planet.  It was named after Mercury, the swift messenger of the Roman gods. Mercury takes 59 days to make a rotation but only 88 days to circle the Sun.  That means that there are fewer than 2 days in a year! Mercury can only be seen from Earth just before sunrise or just after sunset, but not in the middle of the night, because it always appears near the Sun.  Mercury has a very thin atmosphere.  The surface of Mercury has holes in it where objects such as meteorites and asteroids crashed into it.

 

MARS: the red planet

 

 

The temperature on Mars can be very, very cold.  The iron is what gives Mars its red colour.  Mars has many craters which were formed by meteorites or asteroids hitting it.  Mars also has some of the deepest valleys in our solar system, and it is the home of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano found in the solar system.  It stands about 27 kilometers high with a crater 81 kilometers wide. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

 

URANUS: Neptune's twin

Uranus is one of the smaller gas giants in our solar system, but it is still large enough to hold 64 planets the size of Earth. Uranus’ axis is at a 97 degree angle, meaning that it orbits on its side! Uranus' atmosphere is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane.  It’s very cold. The cold methane gas is what gives Uranus its blue-green color. Uranus has eleven known rings.  Uranus has 18 known moons. Some of these moons are less than 90 miles wide and black as coal. 

 

VENUS: Earth's Twin

Venus is the second planet from the Sun.  Venus  and Earth are similar in size, composition, and mass.  Its temperature during the day reaches 484 degrees Celsius.  It’s so hot it could melt lead cannonballs.  The dense atmosphere is composed of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid, which acts as a greenhouse. Venus is usually visible with the naked eye. Venus is sometimes called the "morning star" or the "evening star." It’s the brightest "star" in the sky. That’s the reason why the ancient people called it Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Venus is the closest planet to Earth, but it does not have oceans or human life like Earth.  The surface of Venus has many craters which were made by meteorites and asteroids crashing into the planet.  Venus also has volcanoes.  This planet is unusual because it rotates in a direction opposite that of all of the other planets. Venus spins very slowly as it orbits the Sun. A rotation takes 243 Earth days and its orbit takes 225 Earth days, so a Venusian day is longer than a Venusian year.

JUPITER:  the largest planet

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. It is so large that all of the other planets in the solar system could fit inside of it. Jupiter is a large gas planet whose clouds change colours daily.  A day on Jupiter lasts only 9 hours and 55 minutes. This planet is made mostly of hydrogen and helium gases.  Jupiter gives off two times more heat than it gets from the Sun. It shines very brightly in the night sky for nine months of the year when it is closest to Earth. Jupiter has sixteen known moons. One of Jupiter's moons, Io, has active volcanoes on it. 

 

NEPTUNE:  the blue Planet

One Neptune year lasts 165 Earth years! It is so cold on Neptune that you would need skin thicker than a polar bear's to stay warm. Like Uranus, it is a large gas planet that looks like a big blue-green ball in the sky.  Neptune has winds in its atmosphere which blow at over 2000 kilometres per hour!  Neptune has two thick and two thin rings.  Neptune also has eight moons. Four of these moons orbit the planet within the rings. One of Neptune's moons, Triton, orbits the planet in a direction opposite that of the seven other moons.  Pluto has got an unusual elliptical shaped orbit, for this reason Neptune can be the farthest planet from the Sun for a 20 year period out of every 248 Earth years.

 

EARTH:  the water Planet

Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water. The remaining 30 percent is covered by mountains, volcanoes, deserts, plains, and valleys Earth is the third closest planet to the Sun.  It has an atmosphere made up of many different gases, but mainly it is nitrogen and oxygen. The atmosphere gives us air to breathe. We live on the planet Earth.  The Earth orbits around the Sun. It takes one year to orbit the Sun. The Earth also rotates, or spins, on its axis. It takes one day to spin around one complete time. The Earth's axis is not straight up and down, but tilted a little bit. This tilt is responsible for us having seasons. Otherwise, the temperature would be the same all year long. 

 

SATURN:  the ringed Planet

Saturn is the second biggest planet, but it’s also the lightest planet.  If there was a bathtub big enough to hold Saturn, it would float in the water! It looks like a big ball inside of rings. Saturn's atmosphere has winds which can blow at over 1800 kilometers per hour!  The white spots on Saturn are powerful storms.  Saturn is surrounded by over 1000 rings made of ice and dust. Some of the rings are very thin and some are very thick. The size of the particles in the rings ranges from pebble-size to house-size.  Saturn has at least 18 known moons. Some of these moons orbit the planet within the rings.

 

 

PLUTO:  the ice planet

Pluto is smaller than one of Neptune's moons; Triton Pluto is usually the farthest known planet from the Sun.  It has a very unusual orbit. Once every 248 Earth years, Pluto swings inside the orbit of Neptune. It stays there for twenty years. During those twenty years, Pluto is nearer to the Sun than Neptune. While it is nearer to the Sun, Pluto has an atmosphere. The methane and nitrogen frozen at the poles form an atmosphere.  Pluto has only one known moon. Pluto's moon, Charon, is half the size of Pluto. 

 

Name the planet:

1) Seventy percent of the planet’s surface is covered by water.

2) This planet is the second smallest planet in the solar system.

3) This planet is surrounded by over 1000 rings made of ice and dust.

4) One year on this planet lasts 165 Earth years!

5) This is the largest planet in the solar system

6) Atmosphere of this planet is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane. 

7) This planet has many craters which were formed by meteorites or asteroids hitting it. 

8) The dense atmosphere of this planet is composed of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid, which acts as a greenhouse.

9) This planet has only one known moon, Charon, which is half the size of planet.

 

Answer the questions:

1) Which planet is the closest to the Sun?

2) Which planet is the largest in Solar System?

3) What is the second largest planet?

4) What is the third planet from the Sun?

5) Which planet lies between Earth and an asteroid belt?

6) What planet is even smaller than Mercury?

7) What planet is called Earth's twin because it is about the same size as  Earth?

8) Which planet is the farthest planet from the Sun?

9) Which planet has rings and is about the same size as Neptune?

 

Crossword “Solar System”

 

 

Across

1 The kind of planet that Earth and Mars are.

6 Star at the center of our solar system.

9 This planet is known as the red planet.

10 A hole in the ground caused by a meteor hitting a planet.

13 An outer layer of gas on a terrestrial planet.

15 Planet between Saturn and Neptune.

17 Planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

20 A rock that crashes into Earth's atmosphere.

21 The largest planet in the solar system

 

Down

2 Something that both Saturn and Uranus have.

3 Our planet.

4 An instrument that scientists use to observe planets.

5 Our galaxy.

6 Our sun is this.

7 This used to be called a planet until recently.

8 Planet closest to the sun.

11 Planet named after the sea god

12 Planet known as the evening star.

14 The path that a planet takes around the sun.

16 One of many 'rocks' in a belt between Mars and Jupiter.

17 The force that holds planets in their orbits.

18 Planet famous for its rings.

19 An icy rock that has bright tail when it comes close to the sun.

20 Earth's natural satellite.

 

Text 5B

 

The Sun

 

Our sun is a star located at the center of our Solar System. It is a huge, spinning ball of hot gas and nuclear reactions that lights up the Earth and provides us with heat.

The sun's absolute magnitude (its intrinsic brightness) is +4.83. Its stellar type is G (a star that absorbs strong metallic lines in its spectrum).

The Greeks called the Sun "Helios"; the Romans called it "Sol."

Our sun is a medium-sized yellow star that is 93,026,724 miles (149,680,000 km or 1 Astronomical Unit) from the Earth.

 

         The Earth is closest to the Sun (this is called perihelion) around January 2 each year (91.4 million miles = 147.1 million km); it is farthest away from the Sun (this is called aphelion) around July 2 each year (94.8 million miles = 152.6 million km).

The Sun's core can reach 10 to 22.5 million°F. The surface temperature is approximately 9,900°F (5,500°C). The outer atmosphere of the Sun (which we can see during a solar eclipse) gets extremely hot again, up to 1.5 to 2 million degrees. At the center of big sunspots the temperature can be as low as 7300 °F (4300 K, 4000 °C). The temperature of the Sun is determined by measuring how much energy (both heat and light) it emits.

The Sun is made up of about 2 x 10³⁰ kilograms of gas. It is composed of about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium. About 0.1% is metals (made from hydrogen via nuclear fusion). This ratio is changing over time (very slowly), as the nuclear reactions continue, converting smaller atoms into more massive ones.

Since the Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, it has used up about half of its initial hydrogen supply.

Our Sun is a second or third generation star. Second generation stars do not just burn hydrogen, they also burn heavier elements, like helium and metals (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium), and were formed from supernova explosions (the debris of exploded population II stars).

The element helium was named after the Sun (called "Helios" in Greek) because it was first discovered on the Sun. Helium is plentiful on the Sun but rare on Earth. The element helium was discovered by Jules Janssen during the total solar eclipse of 1868 when he detected a new line in the solar absorption spectrum; Norman Lockyer suggested the name helium.

The composition of the Sun is studied using spectroscopy in which the visible light (the spectrum) of the Sun is studied. At the Sun's core, nuclear fusion produces enormous amounts of energy, through the process of converting hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei (nuclear fusion).

Although the nuclear output of the sun is not entirely consistent, each second the Sun converts about 600,000,000 tons of hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei. These fusion reactions convert part of these atoms' mass (roughly 4 million tons) into energy, and release an enormous amount of this heat and light energy into the Solar System. In these fusion reactions, the Sun loses 4 million tons of mass each second. The Sun will run out of fuel in about 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years. When this happens, the Sun will explode into a planetary nebula, a giant shell of gas that will destroy the planets in the Solar System (including Earth). The Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, as the solar system coalesced from a cloud of gas and dust. Astronomers study the Sun using special instruments. Scientists analyze how and why the amount of light from the Sun varies over time, the effect of the Sun's light on the Earth's climate, spectral lines, the Sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and many other solar phenomena. The outer regions of the Sun (the corona) are studied during solar eclipses.

Never look directly at the sun! Looking at the Sun can blind you or cause cataracts. The Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was launched from the space shuttle on October, 1990 to explore the sun. It has studied the sun's magnetism, solar prominences and coronal mass ejections (orbiting over the south pole of the Sun in 1994 and over the North Pole in 1995), and will complete a second solar orbit in December, 2001.

 

Answer the questions:
1) Is the Sun a star, a planet, or a nebula?
2) Is the Sun solid, liquid, or gaseous?
3) During what month is the Sun closest to the Earth?
4) Where is the Sun hottest?
5) Where is the Sun coolest?
6) What element is most plentiful on the Sun?
7) What element was named after the Sun?
8) What is the primary atomic reaction that occurs within the Sun that converts hydrogen atoms into helium atoms?
9) How old is the Sun?
10) Are sunspots hotter or colder than the surrounding areas?

 

         Listening

“A Direct Look at Five Planets Far From Our Solar System”

We are going to listen about planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, remember a huge disaster that struck four years ago and tell how someone you never met can make you happy. For questions 1-9 complete the sentence:

1) Last month, three teams of astronomers reported making direct images of planets orbiting other ___.

         2) Today, more than ___ planets have been discovered beyond our solar system.

         3) Some planets have been found because they pass ___ the stars they orbit.       

         4) One team was led by Christian Marois, an astronomer at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, Canada. His group found three planets orbiting a star called HR ___.

         5) The team used the Keck Two and Gemini telescopes in Hawaii to produce the image showing the planets. The scientists also used a special technology called adaptive ___.

         6) Bruce Macintosh of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory helped make the discoveries. He says all three objects orbit their star in the same direction and plane -- the ___ planets do.

         7) A second team announced the discovery of one planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. Fomalhaut is the ___ brightest star in the sky.

         8) Ann-Marie Lagrange of the University of Grenoble led a team that used the Very Large Telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The astronomers found the planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, a star ___ light years away.

         9) A team in Thailand reported finding evidence of a tsunami striking that country a few centuries ago. Kruawun Jankaew works at Chulalongkorn University. Her team found sand material that represents a tsunami from ___ to ___ years ago.

 

Writing workshop idea

You have learned many things about space.  You will be taking a space trip.  Write a story about your journey into space.  What did you see on take-off?  How did it make you feel?  Where did you go?  What did you see while you were there?  Are you returning to Earth with a friend or a souvenir?  Did you miss your home planet?

 

Book report questions:

My planet is _____________________.

1  How big is your planet?

2  How many planets is it away from the sun?

3  What is your planet's distance from the earth?

4  Does your planet have any atmosphere?

5  Does your planet have any gravity?

6  Does your planet have any bands or rings?

7  How long does it take for your planet to revolve?

8  How long does it take your planet to rotate?

9  What is your planet's temperature?

10  What planets are on either side of your planet?

11.  Tell something interesting that you learned about your planet that you never knew.

 

Unit 6

Asteroids and Comets

 

 

                            Text 6A

 

                 Asteroids

 

Asteroids are rocky or metallic objects, most of which orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. A few asteroids approach the Sun more closely. None of the asteroids have atmospheres.

The asteroid belt is a doughnut-shaped concentration of asteroids orbiting the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, closer to the orbit of Mars. Most asteroids orbit from between 186 million to 370 million miles (300 million to 600 million km or 2 to 4 AU) from the Sun. The asteroids in the asteroid belt have a slightly elliptical orbit. The time for one revolution around the Sun varies from about three to six Earth years. The strong gravitational force of the planet Jupiter shepherds the asteroid belt, pulling the asteroids away from the Sun, keeping them from careening into the inner planets.

The asteroid belt is not smooth; there are concentric gaps in it (known as Kirkwood gaps). These gaps are orbital radii where the gravitational forces from Jupiter do not let asteroids orbit (they would be pulled towards Jupiter). For example, an orbit in which an asteroid orbited the Sun exactly three times for each Jovian orbit would experience great gravitational forces each orbit, and would soon be pulled out of that orbit. There is a gap at 3.28 AU (which corresponds to 1/2 of Jupiter's period), another at 2.50 AU (which corresponds to 1/3 of Jupiter's period), etc. The Kirkwood gaps are named for Daniel Kirkwood who discovered them in 1866.

There are about 40,000 known asteroids that are over 0.5 miles (1 km) in diameter in the asteroid belt. About 3,000 asteroids have been cataloged. There are many smaller asteroids. The first one discovered (and the biggest) is named Ceres; it was discovered in 1801.

Asteroids range in size from tiny pebbles to about 578 miles (930 kilometers) in diameter (Ceres). Sixteen of the 3,000 known asteroids are over 150 miles (240 km) in diameter. Some asteroids even have orbiting moons.

Ceres is the largest of the asteroids. It was the first asteroid ever discovered (by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi on January 1, 1801). Ceres is the size of the state of Texas! It is so huge in comparison with the other asteroids that its mass is equal to over one-third of the 2.3 x 10²¹ kg estimated total mass of all the 3,000 cataloged asteroids. Ceres is about 578 miles (930 kilometers) in diameter. Ceres is now considered to be a dwarf planet.

Asteroids can be pulled out of their solar orbit by the gravitational pull of a planet. They would then orbit that planet instead of orbiting the Sun. Astronomers theorize that the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are captured asteroids.

The asteroid belt may be material that never coalesced into a planet, perhaps because its mass was too small; the total mass of all the asteroids is only a small fraction of that of our Moon. The total mass of all the asteroids is about 2.3 x 10²¹ kg ); our moon's mass is 7.35 x 10²² kg; the asteroids' mass combined is about 1/30 of the mass of the Moon. A less satisfactory explanation of the origin of the asteroid belt is that it may have once been a planet that was fragmented by a collision with a huge comet.

Trojan asteroids are asteroids that orbit in gravitationally stable Lagrange points in a planet's orbit, either trailing it or preceding it (these places are where the gravitational attraction of the Sun and of the planet balances each other). Jupiter has the most Trojan asteroids; Mars also has some. Achilles was the first Trojan asteroid found. The asteroids preceding Jupiter in its orbit were named for Greek heroes; those following Jupiter in its orbit were named for Trojan heroes.

 

Answer the questions:

1) The asteroid belt orbits between two planets ___ and ___.

2 Are all the asteroids in the asteroid belt?

3) Are asteroids bigger or smaller than planets?

4) What are asteroids composed of?

5) What may have caused the mass extinction on Earth 65 million years ago (the extinction that killed the dinosaurs)?

6) Name another group of organisms that went extinct during this mass extinction.

7) What is the name of the biggest asteroid (and the first one discovered)?

8) What is another name for asteroids?

9) Do any of the asteroids have a moon orbiting them?

10) Is the number of known asteroids over 0.5 miles (about 1 km) in diameter closest to: 40; 400; 4,000; 40,000 or 400,000?

 

Asteroid:

Cloze Activity

Fill in the blanks below

 

Word Bank:

 

Asteroids are rocky or metallic objects, most of which orbit the ___ in the asteroid belt between the planets ___and Jupiter. A few asteroids approach the Sun more closely. Asteroids are also known as ___ or minor planets. The first ___discovered (and the biggest) is named Ceres; it was discovered in 1801.

About 3,000 asteroids have been cataloged. Asteroids range in size from tiny pebbles to about 578 miles (930 kilometers) in diameter (Ceres). There are about 40,000 known asteroids that are over about 0.5 miles (1 ___) in diameter in the asteroid belt. Sixteen of the 3,000 known asteroids are over 150 miles (240 km) in diameter. There are many smaller asteroids. Some large asteroids even have orbiting ___. None of the asteroids have ___.

The asteroid ___ is a doughnut-shaped concentration of asteroids that orbit the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, closer to the orbit of Mars. Most asteroids orbit from between 186 million to 370 million miles (300 million to 600 million km or 2 to 4 AU) from the Sun. The asteroids in the asteroid belt have a slightly elliptical ___. The time for one revolution around the Sun varies from about three to six Earth ___. The strong ___ force of the planet Jupiter shepherds (guides) the asteroid belt, pulling the asteroids away from the Sun, keeping them from falling into the inner planets.

The asteroid belt is not smooth; there are concentric ___ in it (known as Kirkwood gaps). These gaps are orbits where the gravitational forces from Jupiter do not let asteroids orbit (if there were asteroids there, they would be pulled towards Jupiter). The ___ gaps are named for Daniel Kirkwood who discovered them in 1866.

The asteroid belt may be material that never ___ into a planet, perhaps because it’s mass was too small; the total mass of all the asteroids is only a small fraction of that of the Earth's ___. A less satisfactory explanation of the origin of the asteroid belt is that it may have once been a planet that was fragmented by a collision with a huge comet.

 

Text 6B

 

Comets

 

A comet is a small, icy celestial body that orbits around the sun. It is made up of a nucleus (solid, frozen ice, gas and dust), a gaseous coma (water vapor, CO₂, and other gases) and a long tail (made of dust and ionized gases). The tail develops when the comet is near the Sun. Its long ion tail always points away from the sun, because of the force of the solar wind. The tail can be up to 250 million km long, and is most of what we see. Comets are only visible when they're near the sun in their highly eccentric orbits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parts of Comet

 

Nucleus: The nucleus is the frozen center of a comet's head. It is composed of ice, gas, and dust. The nucleus contains most of the comet's mass but is very small (about 1 to 10 km across - or more).

 

Coma: The coma is the roughly spherical blob of gas that surrounds the nucleus of a comet; it is about a million km across. The coma is comprised of water vapor, carbon dioxide gas, ammonia, dust, and neutral gases that have sublimed from the solid nucleus. The coma and the nucleus form the head of a comet.

Ion Tail: A tail of charged gases (ions) always faces away from the sun because the solar wind (ions streaming from the sun at high velocities) pushes it away (it is also called the plasma tail). When the comet is approaching the Sun, the ion tail trails the comet: when the comet is leaving of the Sun, the ion tail leads. The tail fades as the comet moves far from the Sun. The ion tail can be well over 100 million km long

 

Dust Tail: The dust tail is a long, wide tail composed of microscopic dust particles that are buffeted by photons emitted from the Sun; this tail curves slightly due to the comet's motion. The tail fades as the comet moves far from the Sun.

 

Hydrogen Envelope: Hydrogen gas surrounds the coma of the comet and trails along for millions of miles (it is usually between the ion tail and the dust tail). The hydrogen envelope is about 10 million km across at the nucleus of the comet and about 100 million km long. It is bigger when the comet is near the Sun.

 

A comet’s orbit: comets orbit the Sun in highly elliptical orbits. Their velocity increases greatly when they are near the Sun and slows down at the far reaches of the orbit. Since the comet is light only when it is near the Sun (and is it vaporizing), comets are dark (virtually invisible) throughout most of their orbit. The solar wind pushes the tail away from the Sun. Some comets crash into the Sun or get so close that they burn up; these comets are called sun grazers.

 

Comet exploration: NASA's Stardust Mission will visit the Comet Wild 2 in 2004. It will take a sample of comet particles and return them to Earth. The small spacecraft (about 770 pounds = 350 kg) was launched February 7, 1999 and rendezvoused with comet Wild 2 in January, 2004. It will return to Earth on January 15, 2006, and land in western Utah, USA. Comet Wild 2 (aka Comet 81P) is a short-period comet that was discovered by the Swiss astronomer Paul Wild on January 6, 1978. The comet's nucleus is about 3 miles (5 km) across. Wild 2 orbits the Sun every 6.39 years; its elliptical orbit ranges from about Mars' orbit to Jupiter's orbit.

 

Cosmic snowballs: there is a new and very controversial theory that comets (composed of frozen water) are constantly bombarding the Earth. These "cosmic snowballs" have (perhaps) been seen by the visible imaging system of the Polar Satellite. In theory, these frozen comets vaporize in the atmosphere, adding water vapor to the environment.

  

Label the Comet

 

Label the comet diagram using the terms below.

 

 

coma - The roughly spherical blob of gas that surrounds the nucleus of a comet; it is about a million km across. The coma is comprised of water vapor, carbon dioxide gas, and other neutral gases that have sublimed (evaporated from a solid, skipping the liquid phase) from the solid nucleus.

 dust tail - A long, wide tail buffeted by photons emitted from the Sun, but it curves slightly due to the comet's motion.

 hydrogen envelope - Hydrogen gas that surrounds the coma of the comet and trails along for millions of miles (it is usually between the ion tail and the dust tail). The hydrogen envelope is about 10 million km across at the nucleus of the comet and about 100 million km long.

ion tail - A tail of charged gas particles (ions) that always faces away from the sun because the solar wind (composed of ions streaming from the sun at high velocities) pushes it away.

         nucleus - The frozen center of the comet's head. It is made of ice, gas, and dust. It contains most of the comet's mass but is very small (about 1 to 10 km across).

 

Answer the questions:

1) What celestial body do comets orbit?

2) What is the nucleus of a comet made of?

3)  Is a comet's coma solid, liquid, or gaseous?

4) When is the tail of a comet visible?

5) Are comets in circular or elliptical orbits?

6) Name a well-known comet whose visit was recorded in ancient times.

7) What is the name for the process in which a solid matter (like a comet's nucleus) goes directly to a gaseous state?

8)  Does a comet's tail ever face the Sun? 

9) What happens when the Earth crosses a comet's orbit and encounters comet debris?

10) What is the name of a comet that crashes into the sun (or gets so close that it burns up)?

 

Comets

Cloze Activity

Fill in the blanks below

 

Word Bank:

Halley's km burn solar wind orbits

nucleus Sun slows Earth sun grazers

atmosphere elliptical vaporizing tail gases

          A comet is a small, icy celestial body that ___ the Sun. Comets are made up of a ___ (it is solid ice, gas and dust), a gaseous coma that surrounds the nucleus (it is made of water vapor, CO₂, and other ___) and a long ___ (made of dust and ionized gases). The long tail of gas and dust always points away from the ___, because of the force of the ___ (a continuous stream of electrically charged particles - ions- that are given off by the Sun). A comet's tail can be up to 250 million ___ long, and is most of what we see of the comet. Some well-known comets are ___, Shoemaker-Levy 9, Hale Bopp, and Swift-Tuttle.

Comets orbit the Sun in highly ___ orbits. Their velocity increases greatly when they are near the Sun and ___ down at the far reaches of the orbit. Comets are light only when they are near the Sun (when the gas is ___); comets are dark (virtually invisible) throughout most of their orbit. We can only see comets when they're near the Sun. Some comets crash into the Sun or get so close that they ___ up; these comets are called ___.

The ___passes through the orbit of some comets. When this happens, the left-over comet debris (rocks, etc.) bombards the Earth, and the debris burns up in our ___. This is called a meteor shower; in it, many meteors fall through the atmosphere in a relatively short time.

 

Listening

What powers a comet?

Welcome to Space Place Musings with Diane Fisher of the New Millennium Program! We are going to listen to a Podcast in which an expert answers questions from our Space Place museum and astronomy club partners across the nation. Our expert is Dr. Marc Rayman, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For questions 1-8 complete the sentence:

1) Comets travel very fast, loop around the Sun, and have long ___.

2) About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system formed from a vast cloud of gas and dust. More than 99% of the material in the cloud collected at the center and formed the Sun. Other big clumps of gas and dust became the planets, including Earth. Some of the material that didn't get caught up in the Sun or planets gathered into smaller chunks, sometimes just a few kilometers across. Many of these chunks are what we call ___.

         3) Because the comets are much lighter and smaller than planets, they are easily pulled this way and that by the gravity of the planets (or, in some cases, even by stars). So when we see them streaking through the solar system, they often aren't following the kind of neat, nearly circular orbits that most ___ do.

         4) The solid part of the comet, its “nucleus,” is like an icy dirtball with pockets of air trapped inside. When a comet’s orbit brings it into the inner solar system, some of the ice and gas are heated by the Sun, and they expand to form a cloud around the nucleus. Although the nucleus may be only a few kilometers across, the cloud, called a ___, can be thousands of kilometers across—even larger than Earth.

5) Light and other radiation from the Sun push on the gas and dust in the coma, blowing the material away to form a tail that can be millions of kilometers long. So the tail always points away from the Sun, regardless of whether the comet is traveling toward ___ or away.

6) Sun provides the heat that drives some of the material from the nucleus into the huge coma, and it provides the pressure to push some of that into the long and beautiful ___.

7) Well, comets formed in the rotating cloud that produced the solar system, so that rotation got them started on their orbits of the Sun. This is the same reason Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun. But still another force acts on comets. When gases inside the nucleus expand under the heat of the Sun, they often shoot through holes or weak spots in the crust of the nucleus, like the steam coming from the hole in a tea pot. The expanding gas and dust escape in jets, having the same effect as thrusters on a ___, changing the comet's path, and, by the way, making its orbit hard for astronomers to predict precisely.

8) I was lucky enough to be in charge of Deep Space 1 when it flew through the coma of Comet Borrelly in September 2001. The spacecraft had already accomplished its primary mission, so this was a bonus, risky maneuver. We had to design and upload some special software modifications for our advanced autonomous navigation system, which used the spacecraft’s high-tech camera. We made the spacecraft on its own find the comet’s nucleus deep within the coma and take ___ of it.

 

 

Complete the diagram:

Comets and Asteroids Venn Diagram

 

 

Activity

Work in pairs and speak about similarities and differences between comets and asteroids.

Quiz: Space and the Universe

 

1) What are chunks of rocks of varied size in space called?

a) comets

b) shooting stars

c) stars

d) asteroids

2) What 2 planets are most of the asteroids in our solar system found between?

a) Mars and Jupiter

b) Mercury and Venus

c) Earth and Mars

d) Saturn and Jupiter

3) A star is a spinning ball of hot luminous gas which releases what through nuclear reactions?

a) gravity

b) sound

c) energy

d) dust

4) All of the planets have at least one moon, except for which two?

a) Venus and Mercury

b) Saturn and Mars

c) Jupiter and Venus

d) Pluto and Neptune

5) The elements hydrogen and helium together comprise what percent of almost all matter in the Universe?

a) 75 percent

b) 83 percent

c) 96 percent

d) 98 percent

6) What is the constellation Orion?

a) hunter

b) dove

c) winged horse

d) swan

7) Approximately how many miles away is the moon from earth?

a) 96,077 miles

b) 238,866 miles

c) 338,660 miles

d) 1,833,900 miles

8) Which of these four is usually farthest from the sun?

a) Jupiter

b) Uranus

c) Saturn

d) Pluto

9) Which planet is the largest in size?

a) Earth

b) Neptune

c) Jupiter

d) Saturn

10) Who discovered Pluto in 1930?

a) Joahann Encke

b) Edwin Hubble

c) Herbert R. Pluto

d) Clyde Tombaugh

 

Unit 7

The atmosphere

Text 7A

 

The atmosphere

 

The earth is surrounded by layers of gases, our atmosphere. They are kept near the earth’s surface by gravity. Our atmosphere filters the sunlight and keeps dangerous rays from reaching our planet. Without such a filter it would get too hot during the daytime. At night it prevents heat from escaping so it does not get too cold. Without an atmosphere life on our planet would not be possible. It also makes our world a more pleasant place to live. Air carries sound waves, which let us hear voices or listen to music. The atmosphere creates rainbows, makes the sky turn blue on clear days and the sun red when it sets.

The air near the earth’s surface consists of 77 percent nitrogen and about 21 percent oxygen. Carbon dioxide is also present, but only in small amounts. Nevertheless it is very important because green plants use it when they make their food. Higher up you can find helium and hydrogen in the atmosphere. Not all gases are created by nature, some are produced by people. Methane rises into the atmosphere from decaying plants and animals. Carbon monoxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) enter the atmosphere because of industrial activities.

We often think that the air is weightless but it isn’t. The whole weight of the earth’s atmosphere is about 5.5 quadrillion tons (55 followed by 14 zeros). Air is heaviest at sea level because the air molecules are pressed together. It also presses against our bodies but we have pressure inside, so we don’t feel it. When you move farther away from the earth’s surface the atmosphere gets lighter and lighter because there is more room between air molecules. The weight of the air decreases and so does air pressure.

 

 

Layers of the atmosphere

 

 

Troposphere

The troposphere is the layer closest to the earth’s surface and the part of the atmosphere that we know about best. It extends from sea level to almost 19 km above the equator, but only 9 km above the North and South Poles. In the troposphere it gets colder the higher up you move. Temperatures drop by about 0.7°C to 1 ° C every 100 meters.

This lower part of the atmosphere is responsible for our weather. Water evaporates from oceans and rivers and forms clouds which can produce, rain or snow. Winds also get stronger the higher you go up. At the top of the troposphere so-called jet streams reach speeds of up to 300 km an hour.

As you go up the air gets thinner. People must wear pressure suits and use oxygen masks when they travel to higher regions. The troposphere helps to keep the temperatures on earth moderate.

 

Stratosphere

The second layer of our atmosphere is the stratosphere. It extends up to an altitude of 50 km above the earth’s surface. A gas called ozone causes the temperature to rise again. Ozone absorbs the ultraviolet light that comes from the sun and changes it into heat. Without ozone this dangerous light would reach the earth’s surface, cause skin problems and harm plants and animals.

 

Mesosphere

The mesosphere extends from the top of the stratosphere to about 80 km. The air becomes even thinner and the temperatures drop again. At the top of the mesosphere they may be lower than - 75° C.

 

Thermosphere

The thermosphere ranges from 80 km to about 400 km above the earth. In this layer temperatures increase rapidly with altitude. At the bottom temperatures are below freezing, at the top they can reach over 1,000 °C. Satellites orbit the earth at this height.

Exosphere

 In the outermost layer of the atmosphere temperatures are steady, averaging around 1200°C. Molecules in the exosphere are so far away from each other that they normally don’t collide. The layer extends into outer space and joins with the atmosphere of the sun and other planets. Atoms and particles escape the earth’s gravitation and float to outer space.

 

Endangered Atmosphere

During millions of years the atmosphere has remained the same. It can change when, for example, when ashes and hot gases erupt from an active volcano. This can block sunlight for years or cause temperatures to change.

In the past centuries people have also caused great changes in the atmosphere.

 More and more grazing animals produce methane gas.

Fossil fuels like coal, oil or gas produce carbon dioxide which leads to the greenhouse effect. This gas makes the atmosphere denser and it traps the heat.

CFCs that come from air conditioning, spray cans or burning plastic get into the atmosphere and endanger the ozone layer.

Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are emitted into the atmosphere by industries and cars. These gases can combine with water in the air and produce what is called acid rain. It pollutes lakes and damages buildings and other structures.

 

Answer the questions:

1) What keeps the atmosphere near the surface of the earth?

2) How does the atmosphere protect us?

3) How can the atmosphere change the skies?

4) What is the lower part of the atmosphere made up of?

5) What kind of gases do people create?

6) Why don’t we collapse under the weight of the atmosphere?

7) How far into the sky does the troposphere reach?

8) How do temperatures change in the troposphere?

9) What is the jet stream?

10) What do people have to wear when they climb high mountains? Why?

11) Why do temperatures change in the stratosphere?

12) What would happen without the ozone layer?

11) How far into space does the thermosphere reach? What can we find there?

12) How does gravity change the farther into space you get?

13) How can a volcanic eruption change our atmosphere?

 

Match the words with the definitions:

Word	Definition
1altitude	a) a gas that damages the ozone layer; it is in refrigerators an spray cans
2 air pressure	b) to break out with a lot of power
3  block	c) to let certain things in and keep other things out
4 carbon dioxide	d) not too hot and not too cold
5 carbon monoxide	e) if you do not let something out ; it cannot escape
6 chlorofluorocarbon	f) a special suit you must wear to survive when you fly at great heights
7 collide	g) to go down
8 damage	h) gas that is produced when we breathe out or when carbon is burned
9 deforestation	i) a form of energy that comes from nuclear power; it is dangers to living things
10 erupt	g) the cutting and burning down of trees in a place
11 evaporate	k) furthest from the middle
12filter	l) how high an object is above sea level
13 gravitation	m) to eat grass in the fields
14 graze	n) destroy, harm
15 moderate	o) to change slowly into gas
16 outermost	p) the power that makes two objects move towards each other
17 pressure suit	q) how heavy the air is
18 radiation	r) to crash into each other
19 set	s) a poisonous gas that is produced when you burn fuel or wood
20 trap	t) keep out

 

True or False?T F

1 Without the ozone layer dangerous sunlight would reach the earth’s surface.

2 77 % of the earth’s atmosphere is made up of oxygen.

3 The weight of the atmosphere is the same everywhere.

4 Methane rises into the atmosphere from plants and animals.

5 The atmosphere is kept near the earth because of gravity.

6 The troposphere is bigger near the poles.

7 In the troposphere winds get stronger when you move higher up.

8 Temperatures go down in all parts of the atmosphere.

9 The stratosphere extends to about 80 km above the earth’s surface

10 CFCs come from the sun and endanger our atmosphere

11 Fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide.

12 Acid rain has poisonous gases like sulphur and nitrogen in it.

13 When a volcano erupts sunlight can be blocked out for many years.

14 Rockets can only travel up to the stratosphere.

15 In higher parts of the atmosphere you can find helium and hydrogen.

16 All of the gases in the atmosphere are produced by people.

 

Match a part from A, B and C to form complete sentences:

A	B	C
Carbon dioxide is present	because the molecules	of 300 km an hour
In the mesosphere	and keeps dangerous rays	from each other
In the exosphere	molecules are very far	are pressed together
The atmosphere filters sunlight	winds reach speeds	and the temperatures drop
Air is heaviest at sea level	in small amounts	that we know best
Without an atmosphere	people have caused	from reaching our planet
At the top of the troposphere	of the atmosphere	to live on earth
In the past centuries	the air becomes thinner	great changes in the atmosphere
The troposphere is a part	it would not be possible	but it is very important

 

         Listening

“Why does Earth rotate?”

We are going to listen to New Millennium Program. Welcome to Space Place Musings, where an expert answers questions from our Space Place museum partners across the nation. Our expert is Dr. Marc Rayman, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Complete the sentences with numbers:

59                  2                           1000                    243              6                    24

         1) Earth's graceful ___ hour rotation rate is one of the traits that make our world so friendly to life, allowing most parts of our planet to stay a nice, comfortable temperature as they are bathed in sunlight during the day and darkness at night.

         2) While the rotation may seem slow, Earth is so big that it’s turning at more than ___ miles per hour at the equator.

         3) Tiny Mercury, sizzling close to the Sun, takes ___ Earth days to turn around just once.

         4) Venus, the second planet, rotates once every ___ Earth days, and in a direction opposite its orbit around the Sun.

         5) One hundred years from now, a day will be about ___ milliseconds longer than today.

         6) Scientists estimate that a day in the life of early Earth could have been only about ___ hours long.

 

True or False:

Decide whether the following statements are true or false by referring to the information in the text. Then make the necessary changes so that the false statements, become true.

         1) Each planet in the solar system has the same rotation rate.

         2) Almost ten billion years ago, our solar system began as a vast cloud of dust and gas.

         3) The cloud began to collapse, flattening into a giant disk that rotated faster and faster as its gravity made it smaller.

         4) Scientists believe that a large object, perhaps the size of Mars, hit our young planet, knocking out some chunks of material that eventually collected and became our Moon. This collision may have set Earth spinning faster.

         5) As Earth rotates, the Sun's gravity causes the oceans to seem to rise and fall.

         6) Throughout history, inventors have worked to develop more and more accurate speed keeping technologies.

        

Speaking

Our atmosphere is in danger. It is getting warmer and the ozone layer is

being destroyed. What can we do about it? How can we deal with this problem?

 

Unit 8

Telescopes

Text 8A

 

Telescope

 

 

Based on written records, the invention of the telescope is credited to Hans Lippershey of the Netherlands. Galileo is the first person to use a telescope to look at astronomical objects and record his observations. Galileo built about 30 telescopes but used only 10 to observe the sky. Through his careful observations and dedication, Galileo found support for the Copernican view of the solar system.

A telescope collects light from a distant object and focuses it to form an image of the object. When the image is recorded, an observation is made. Originally, the only way to record the image was by hand — astronomers would make a drawing of what they saw through their telescopes. In the 1800’s, photography was invented and astronomers experimented with making photographs through their telescopes. In the early 20th century, astronomers started specifically designing and building telescopes to record the image on photographic plates. The 1980’s saw the invention of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) that allow the image to be recorded digitally. By the end of the 20th century, all research telescopes would use CCDs to make observations.

The factors used to determine the quality of a telescope are its ability to gather light, its resolution, its magnification, and the quality of its instruments. Of these, the magnification is the least important for research telescopes. The light-gathering power is a measure of how much light the telescope captures and is a function of the diameter of the primary mirror or lens. The bigger the lens or mirror, the more light the telescope can gather. Resolution is the ability to see detail. A telescope with high resolution can separate two closely spaced objects, whereas a telescope with low resolution will reveal a single object that may be misshaped. Using a different eyepiece can change the magnification of today’s backyard telescopes. As the magnification increases, the telescope focuses on increasingly smaller parts of the sky, reducing the field of view of the telescope. Research telescopes don’t have eyepieces, so they can’t change the magnification and therefore have a fixed field of view for the telescope. Researchers are more interested in the instruments that are used to record and analyze the light. A large telescope with high resolution and quality instruments is desirable for research.

Galileo mounted his telescope to minimize the shaking that results from holding the telescope. As technology progressed and telescope tubes became longer, mounting was necessary to support the weight of the telescope. The invention of photography and its application to telescopes made mounting more important.

Radio telescopes need to be big for two reasons. One reason is that there isn’t much radio radiation reaching Earth, so big reflectors will capture more light. The second reason is the large wavelength of radio waves. To resolve closely spaced sources, the radio dish needs to be very large. One alternative to building very large radio telescopes is to build arrays of telescopes.

Solar telescopes are specialized to observe the hot, bright Sun, the nearest star to Earth. The heat and brightness of the Sun make it difficult to use equipment that was designed to look at dim sources of light like distant stars and nebulae. The effects of heating tend to change the shape of the mirrors and cause the air to move, which blurs the image

Telescopes are put into space to get above the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere. For visible light, pockets of air in the atmosphere act like tiny lenses, bending the light from celestial objects in random, unpredictable directions. By placing a visible-light telescope above the atmosphere, these distortions are not encountered. Also, the atmosphere absorbs most other wavelengths of light. Placing a telescope in space is the only way to view celestial objects in those wavelengths.

 

         Answer the questions:

1) Who invented the telescope?

2) How does a telescope work?

3) By what qualities is a telescope judged?

4) Why are telescopes mounted?

5) Why do radio telescopes need to be so big?

6) Why are solar telescopes different from other telescopes?

7) Why are telescopes put into space?

 

Text 8B

 

Hubble

 

The 32,000–word novella The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, published in 1895, is generally credited with popularizing the idea of time travel by means of a time machine, a vehicle which takes the occupant backward or forward in time. Dozens of sequels and adaptations over the years have further promoted the notion. Indeed, Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity lays the foundation for the possibility of time travel. So far, no one has demonstrated the ability to travel in time. However, time machines have been constructed, and they do allow glimpses into the past.

The most efficacious time machine currently in existence is the Hubble Telescope, named after the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble. Its capability to locate distant astronomical targets and lock in on them, permitting their faint light to aggregate on its detectors, allows it to peer far into the past. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. The Hubble Telescope has looked back in time at 10,000 galaxies whose light left them billions of years ago. Therefore, utilizing

the telescope as time machine, astronomers are able to contemplate galaxies as they were eons ago.

Although the telescope was launched into space in 1990, its inception was almost a half–century earlier as astronomer Lyman Spitzer, Jr. mulled over the possibility of a large space telescope in a 1946 report, “Astronomical Advantages of an Extra–Terrestrial Observatory.” Because the earth is bathed in its constantly churning atmosphere, earth–based telescopes cannot penetrate deep space; the atmosphere distorts the view. Telescopes were constructed on mountains, but there was still no way to wholly escape the effects of the layers of gases enveloping the earth.

During the 1960s, the Space Race between the then–Soviet Union and the United States was accelerating. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established. Funds for space endeavors were abundant, and plans for a large space telescope, by then designated the LST, were underway. The designs called for a 2.4–meter primary telescope mirror which could be transported into space by one of NASA’s rockets. According to National

Geographic’s Imaging Space and Time, the resolving power of the deep space telescope would be “equivalent to being able to distinguish the left and right headlights of a car in California seen from New York, or features less than 1/30,000th the size of the full moon. This was at least a tenfold increase over the atmospheric limit.”

One of the primary challenges involved in successfully transporting the telescope into space was protecting the mirror from the jarring vibrations that occur during launch. It was crucial that the mirror be able to withstand the shuttle’s vicissitudes as well as the volatile atmospheric conditions found in space. If not, the precise shape of the mirror could be compromised, and its imaging capability significantly weakened.

After the telescope had been launched, astronomers subsequently realized that the primary mirror had not been ground correctly. A lens in the test instrument was about one millimeter askew, which is large by optical standards. In 1993, space–walking astronauts installed corrective lenses which improved the eyesight of the Hubble. In 2009, the corrective lenses themselves were replaced with a supersensitive spectrograph with built–in corrective lenses. The new spectrograph is expected to provide insight into the origins of stars and galaxies.

The successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope, is expected to be launched in 2014. It will observe only in infrared, so it will complement the Hubble Telescope, which observes in the visible and ultraviolet light ranges.    Hubble currently has the capability to view galaxies that were formed 13.7 billion years ago, long before humans existed, in an area called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Astronomers aspire to see beyond the Hubble Ultra Deep Field to a time that is devoid of galaxies, a time before galaxies had formed. If H.G. Wells was onto something in his novella, that time may be close at hand. As one of the characters in the popular work asked, “If Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?”

Less than a decade after Wells’ novella, Einstein’s Special Theory Relativity seemed to concur with Wells’ character by proposing that traveling through space at the speed of light would alter time by causing it to dilate, raising the possibility of not merely glimpsing the past, but perhaps traveling to it.

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) According to the passage, which of the following statements is/are true of the Hubble Telescope?

I) It is unable to observe light on the infrared part of the spectrum.

II) It will be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2014.

III) It was initially constructed in 1946, but not launched until 1990.

a) I only

b) II only

c) III only

d) I and II only

e) II and III only

2) According to the passage, who had the idea for the Hubble Telescope?

a) H.G. Wells

b) Albert Einstein

c) Lyman Spitzer, Jr.

d) Edwin P. Hubble

e) James Webb

3) In line 33, vicissitudes most closely means

a) long delays which may compromise the shuttle launch

b) toxic emissions which may cause corrosion around the mirror

c) sound waves which may penetrate the mirror

d) atmospheric conditions which may compromise the mirror

e) shaking and quivering which may cause changes in the mirror

4) In the context of the passage, which of the following best articulates the author’s opinion of the inception of the Hubble?

a) It was a pipedream with little imminent chance of success.

b) It was a literary vehicle with little basis in reality.

c) It was an emergency response to the quickening Space Race.

d) It was based on a scientific proposition which was not proven.

e) It was a waste of time and money which were needed elsewhere.

5)The primary purpose of the passage is to

a) draw a comparison between H.G. Wells’ notion of time travel with Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.

b) discuss the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope as a tool for exploring deep space.

c) examine difficulties which precipitated construction of corrective lenses for the Hubble’s primary mirror.

d) describe the circumstances which underlay the mid–century national drive toward a large space–based observatory.

e) dispute the argument that the Hubble Telescope functions as a modern–day time machine.

6) It can be inferred that the author regards time travel as

a) an effective hook for a work of fiction, but an improbability in the reality of astronomy.

b) an interesting literary notion, but proven to be impossible by Einstein’s Special Theory.

c) a persuasive topic in fiction, as well as a hypothetical possibility in light of Einstein’s Special Theory.

d) a ridiculous idea whose time has come and gone, as well as an astronomical improbability.

e) the incoherent literary construction of a fictional author, with little relevance to today’s scientific community.

7) It can be inferred from the passage that scientists believe that time is

a) a constant.

b) unidirectional.

c) a spatial dimension.

d) an impenetrable mystery.

e) an imaginary construction.

 

Text 8C

 

Hubble Space Telescope Configuration

 

 

This illustration shows the Hubble Space Telescope’s (HST’s) major configuration elements. The spacecraft has three interacting systems: The Support System Module (SSM), an outer structure that houses the other systems and provides services such as power, communication, and control; The Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA), which collects and concentrates the incoming light in the focal plane for use by the Scientific Instruments (SI); and five SIs. The SI Control and Data Handling (CDH) unit controls the five SI’s, four that are housed in an aft section focal plane structure and one that is placed along the circumference of the spacecraft. The purpose of the HST, the most complex and sensitive optical telescope ever made, is to study the cosmos from a low-Earth orbit. By placing the telescope in space, astronomers are able to collect data that is free of the Earth’s atmosphere. The HST detects objects 25 times fainter than the dimmest objects seen from Earth and provides astronomers with an observable universe 250 times larger than visible from ground-based telescopes, perhaps as far away as 14 billion light-years. The HST views galaxies, stars, planets, comets, possibly other solar systems, and even unusual phenomena such as quasars, with 10 times the clarity of ground-based telescopes. The HST was deployed from the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31 mission) into Earth orbit in April 1990. The Marshall Space Flight Center had responsibility for design, development, and construction of the HST. The Perkin-Elmer Corporation, in Danbury, Connecticut, developed the optical system and guidance sensors. The Lockheed Missile and Space Company of Sunnyvale, California produced the protective outer shroud and spacecraft systems, and assembled and tested the finished telescope.

        

         Choose the correct answer:

         1) The spacecraft has ___ interacting systems

a)     one

b)    two

c)     three

         2) The Support System Module (SSM) is

a)     an outer structure that houses the other systems and provides services such as power, communication, and control

b)    system which collects and concentrates the incoming light in the focal plane for use by the Scientific Instruments

c)     unit controls the five SI’s, four that are housed in an aft section focal plane structure and one that is placed along the circumference of the spacecraft

3) The Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA) is

a)     an outer structure that houses the other systems and provides services such as power, communication, and control

b)    system which collects and concentrates the incoming light in the focal plane for use by the Scientific Instruments

c)     unit controls the five SI’s, four that are housed in an aft section focal plane structure and one that is placed along the circumference of the spacecraft

4) The SI Control and Data Handling (CDH)

a)     an outer structure that houses the other systems and provides services such as power, communication, and control

b)    system which collects and concentrates the incoming light in the focal plane for use by the Scientific Instruments

c)     unit controls the five SI’s, four that are housed in an aft section focal plane structure and one that is placed along the circumference of the spacecraft

5) The purpose of the HST is

a)     is to study the Earth from a low-Earth orbit

b)    is to study the Moon from a low-Earth orbit

c)     is to study the cosmos from a low-Earth orbit

6) The ___ had responsibility for design, development, and construction of the HST

a)     NASA

b)    Marshall Space Flight Center

c)     European Space Agency

 

Quiz: The Hubble Space Telescope

1) NASA calls the Hubble Space Telescope an "orbiting observatory". What is the main advantage that an orbiting, or space-bound telescope, has over an earth-bound telescope?

a) It is not affected by earth's atmosphere or weather

b) It does not require a focusing system

c) It is less expensive to build

d) It does not need a power supply

2) One of the original goals of the Hubble Space Telescope was to find an accurate value for the Hubble's Law. What is Hubble's Law?

a) the intensity of light emitted from a star

b) the speed that a galaxy moves away from us (on earth) is proportional to its distance from us

c) the rotational speed of a galaxy is related to it diameter

d) the relative age of the universe compared to the Milky Way galaxy

3) The Hubble Space Telescope has sent back amazing images of nebulae, including the Horsehead Nebula and the Ring Nebula. What is a nebula?

a) an ice field around outer planets

b) a meteor shower

c) an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionised gases

d) a distant galaxy

4) What instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope allows scientists to get the most information on the chemical composition of celestial bodies?

a) the Wide Field and Planetary Camera

b) the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph

c) the Fine Guidance Sensors

d) the Faint Object Camera

5) The Wide Field Camera 3 was installed in the Hubble Space Telescope in 2008. What light spectrum does this instrument use?

a) the visible light spectrum

b) the ultraviolet spectrum

c) the infrared spectrum

d) all of these

6) To test the instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA technicians wear "bunny suits", which are protective suits that cover their heads, torso, legs and feet. The main reason they wear these suits is:

a) to protect against scratching the instruments

b) to keep a neutral electrical charge on the technicians

c) to protect against personal injury from the instruments

d) to protect the instruments from lint and other contaminants

7) How are major repairs or upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope made?

a) Astronauts perform the repairs or upgrades

b) Repairs or upgrades are not made- the instruments have a limited life

c) The repairs or upgrades are made by on-board computers

d) Repairs or upgrades are made by robots

8) The Wide Field Camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope does not have real lenses.

a) True

b) False

9) Like land-based telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope has a primary mirror. What is special about this mirror?

a) It has a magnesium fluoride overcoat

b) It has a honeycomb shape to save weight

c) It can withstand changes in temperatures

d) All of these

10) The NASA facility most involved in the mission of the Hubble Space Telescope is:

a) Goddard Space Flight Center

b) Jet Propulsion Laboratory

c) Marshall Space Flight Center

d) Kennedy Space Center

 

Listening

1 Edwin Hubble

You are going to listen to American Radio Program. Today, Richard Rael and Tony Riggs tell the story of American astronomer Edwin Hubble. He changed our ideas about the universe and how it developed. For questions 1-10 complete the sentence:

1) Edwin Hubble made his most important discoveries in the ___.

2)     Edwin Powell Hubble was born in ___ in Marshfield, Missouri.    

3)     Edwin Hubble  went to Queen’s College at Oxford, England where he studied ___.

4) At the University of Chicago he studied ___.

5) Hubble watched the night sky with instruments at the university’s Yerkes Observatory. His research involved a major question astronomers could not answer: What are ___?

6) In his first observations from Mount Wilson, Hubble used a telescope with a mirror one hundred fifty-two centimeters across.     He studied objects within our own ___. And he made an important discovery about nebulae. 

7) An astronomer at Harvard College, Henrietta Leavitt, had discovered that these periods of brightness could be used to measure the star’s distance from Earth.      Hubble made the measurements. They showed that the Andromeda nebula laid far ___ our Milky Way Galaxy. 

8) Hubble proposed a system to describe galaxies by their ___. His system still is used today. He also showed that galaxies are similar in the kinds of bright objects they contain. All galaxies, he said, are related to each other, much as members of a family are related to each other. 

9) The Doppler Effect explains changes in the length of light waves or sound waves as they move toward you or away from you. Light waves from an object speeding away from you will stretch into longer wavelengths. They appear red. Light waves from an object speeding toward you will have shorter wavelengths. They appear ___.

         10) Observations of forty-six galaxies showed Hubble that the galaxies were traveling away from Earth. The observations also showed that the speed was linked directly to the galaxies’ distance from Earth. Hubble discovered that the farther away a galaxy is, the greater its speed. This scientific rule is called “___.”

11) Hubble left the Mount Wilson Observatory during World War Two. He did research for the United States War Department. He returned after the war. Then, he spent much of his time planning a new, much larger telescope in southern California. The telescope was completed in nineteen forty-nine. It had a mirror ___ centimeters across. It was named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. 

 

2 Kepler Telescope

1 Listen to the news and complete the gaps in the text:

 

NASA has successfully launched a ___ (1) carrying a planet-hunting telescope. The powerful Kepler telescope will search for planets similar to the Earth. Scientists believe there are good chances of finding a planet like ours somewhere out there in the ___ (2). There are billions and billions of stars in the heavens. If one planet is the right distance from one of these stars, then conditions might be right to support life. The planet’s atmosphere should neither be too hot nor too cold. The planet would also need ___(3). The telescope is named after the German 17th-Century astronomer Johannes Kepler. It will spend more than three years looking for dark specks against the brightness of a hundred-thousand stars. These specks could be Earth-like planets.

The manager of the $600-million project Jim Fanson said: "We have a feeling like we're about to set sail across an ___ (4) to discover a new world." NASA’s space science boss Ed Weiler agreed that the mission was a “historical” landmark in space exploration. However, he couldn’t say whether or not the telescope would find another ___ (5). “It very possibly could tell us that Earths are very, very common...or that Earths are really, really, really rare - perhaps we're the only Earth,” he said. He told reporters how important Kepler’s journey was, saying: "It really attacks some basic human questions that have been asked since that first man or woman looked up at the sky and asked, “___ (6).”

 

1 TRUE / FALSE: Look at the article and say whether these sentences are true (T) or false (F). If it false, correct the sentence:

a)     NASA will soon launch a telescope that will look for planets like ours.

b)    Scientists believe the chances of finding an Earth-like planet are good.

c)     A German astronomer called Kepler invented the telescope.

d)    The telescope will look at stars for a hundred thousand years.

e)     The project manager likened the mission to voyaging to new worlds.

f)      A NASA boss said he would build a landmark on any new planets.

g)     The boss said it’s possible we may be the only Earth in the galaxy.

h)     The boss said a basic question for the human race is ‘Are we lonely?’

2 Synonym match: Match the following synonyms from the article:

1 search                                                     a) require

2 finding                                                     b) voyage

3 support                                                   c) scarce

4 need                                                        d) sustain

5 specks                                                     e) look for

6 set sail                                                     f) fundamental

7 landmark                                                 g) embark

8 rare                                                         h) locating

9 journey                                                    i) milestone

10 basic                                                     j) spots

 

3 Phrase match: Match the following phrases from the article (sometimes more than one. combination is possible):

 

1	NASA has successfully launched	a)	hot nor too cold
2	Scientists believe there are good chances of	b)	only Earth
3	There are billions and billions of stars in	c)	finding a planet
4	The planet’s atmosphere should neither be too	d)	rare
5	looking for dark specks against	e)	space exploration
6	set sail	f)	a rocket
7	a “historical” landmark in	g)	human questions
8	Earths are really, really, really	h)	the heavens
9	perhaps we're the	i)	the brightness
10	It really attacks some basic	j)	across an ocean

 

Speaking

Work in pairs and answer the questions:

 

Student A

a)     What did you think when you read the headline?

b)    What springs to mind when you hear the word ‘alien’?

c)     Do you think governments should spend money on space exploration?

d)    Do you think there is life on other planets?

e)     What should scientists do if they find signs of life?

f)      What three questions would you ask an alien?

g)     Do you think there’d be any problems if aliens came to Earth?

h)     What do you think the chances are of finding a planet similar to Earth?

i)       What do you think the chances are of aliens looking like us?

j)       If no planets are found, is the telescope a waste of money?

 

Student B

a)     Did you like listening to this article?

b)    What’s more important, this $600-million telescope or feeding the poor?

c)     Have you ever set sail on a great journey?

d)    What kind of people do you think space scientists are?

e)     What other historical landmarks in space exploration do you know of?

f)      How would we change if the telescope found hundreds of Earths?

g)     What’s the most important journey you’ve been on?

h)     What questions do you ask when you look up at the sky?

i)       Do you care whether or not we are alone?

j)       What questions would you like to ask NASA’s space science boss Ed Weiler?

 

 

Unit 9

 

Space vehicles

 

Rocket is a vehicle equipped with a jet engine and used for space travel. Rocket consists of:

Launch escape system: tower that enables the astronauts to retreat in case of danger.

Lunar module: means of transport for traveling on or around the moon.

Liquid hydrogen: part of the rocket containing reserves of liquid hydrogen.

J-3 engine: part of the third stage that detaches it from the second stage.

J-2 engine: part of the second stage that detaches it from the first stage.

Liquid oxygen: part of the rocket that contains reserves of liquid oxygen for use as engine fuel.

Kerosene: part of the rocket that contains reserves of kerosene for use as engine fuel.

Stabilizing fin: part of the rocket that keeps it steady during takeoff.

Nozzle: part of the rocket through which flowing fluid enables it to gain speed.

F-1 engine: part of the rocket that enable it to take off.

First stage: part of the rocket closest to the ground during takeoff.

Inter-stage: part of the rocket connecting the first and the second stages.

Second stage: second part of the rocket from the ground.

Third stage: part of the rocket that carries the payload.

Payload: that which is to be in space.

 

Text 9A

 

Rockets

 

The invention of rockets is linked inextricably with the invention of 'black powder'. Most historians of technology credit the Chinese with its discovery. They base their belief on studies of Chinese writings or on the notebooks of early Europeans who settled in or made long visits to China to study its history and civilization. It is probable that, sometime in the tenth century, black powder was first compounded from its basic ingredients of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. But this does not mean that it was immediately used to propel rockets. By the thirteenth century, powder-propelled fire arrows had become rather common. The Chinese relied on this type of technological development to produce incendiary projectiles of many sorts, explosive grenades and possibly cannons to repel their enemies. One such weapon was the 'basket of fire' or, as directly translated from Chinese, the 'arrows like flying leopards'. The 0.7 meter-long arrows, each with a long tube of gunpowder attached near the point of each arrow, could be fired from a long, octagonal-shaped basket at the same time and had a range of 400 paces. Another weapon was the 'arrow as a flying sabre', which could be fired from crossbows. The rocket, placed in a similar position to other rocket-propelled arrows, was designed to increase the range. A small iron weight was attached to the 1.5m bamboo shaft, just below the feathers, to increase the arrow's stability by moving the centre of gravity to a position below the rocket. At a similar time, the Arabs had developed the 'egg which moves and burns'. This 'egg' was apparently full of gunpowder and stabilized by a 1.5m tail. It was fired using two rockets attached to either side of this tail.

It was not until the eighteenth century that Europe became seriously interested in the possibilities of using the rocket itself as a weapon of war and not just to propel other weapons. Prior to this, rockets were used only in pyrotechnic displays. The incentive for the more aggressive use of rockets came not from within the European continent but from far-away India, whose leaders had built up a corps of rocketeers and used rockets successfully against the British in the late eighteenth century. The Indian rockets used against the British were described by a British Captain serving in India as ‘an iron envelope about 200 millimeters long and 40 millimeters in diameter with sharp points at the top and a 3m-long bamboo guiding stick’. In the early nineteenth century the British began to experiment with incendiary barrage rockets. The British rocket differed from the Indian version in that it was completely encased in a stout, iron cylinder, terminating in a conical head, measuring one meter in diameter and having a stick almost five meters long and constructed in such a way that it could be firmly attached to the body of the rocket. The Americans developed a rocket, complete with its own launcher, to use against the Mexicans in the mid-nineteenth century. A long cylindrical tube was propped up by two sticks and fastened to the top of the launcher, thereby allowing the rockets to be inserted and lit from the other end. However, the results were sometimes not that impressive as the behaviour of the rockets in flight was less than predictable.

 

Match each item with the group which first invented or used them.

Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1) black powder

2) rocket-propelled arrows for fighting

3) rockets as war weapons

4) the rocket launcher

First invented or used by

A) the Chinese

B) the Indians

C) the British

D) the Arabs

 E) the Americans

 

Text 9B

 

Rockets for satellite communication

 

The world needs a telecommunications system which could give constant field strength at all times over the whole earth. Although it is possible to provide telephone links between any two points on earth, the ionosphere can make long distance communication difficult.

A rocket flying at 8 km/sec outside the earth's atmosphere would stay in orbit. It would be like a second moon, going round the earth without using power. If the rocket were in orbit 42,000 km above the earth, it would circle the earth once every 24 hours. It would stay above the same spot on the earth.

It would be possible to build a space station in such an orbit by carrying up materials in rockets. The station could be provided with transmitting and receiving equipment, and could act as a repeater to relay transmissions between any two points on the hemisphere beneath.

For a world service at least three stations would be needed, placed at equal distances around the earth. This is the only way to transmit around the whole world, using beams in an unlimited number of channels. The station would have very low power needs, and even if it were expensive at first the system would be much cheaper to run than present ones.

The first manmade satellite was launched on 4 October 1957. Five years later the Telstar, working in a low altitude orbit, made possible live broadcasts between North America and: Europe. The transmissions lasted for about 24 minutes at a time, but the satellite had the capacity for about sixty telephone circuits or a very limited TV channel.

Intelsat I had only 240 telephone channels, but now satellites like Intelsat V relay 75% of international telephone calls. New satellites have high capacity, long life, and can be used for telephone, television or computer data transmissions. Intelsat V has 12,000 circuits for all types of telecommunications.

Transmissions from a satellite can give global or spot beam coverage, but they are received by all earth stations in sight of the satellite. Each station selects the channels or carriers which are addressed to it. In the same way, all stations in sight of a satellite can use it simultaneously, and this is known as multiple access.

Earth stations must be capable of detecting very low level signals. Their parabolic antennas, which track the satellite automatically, feed the signal to a low noise first stage amplifier, which may be followed by a second stage travelling wave tube amplifier. The earth station transmitting equipment is very powerful, emitting signals at up to 10 kW. In some cases it is possible to control the satellite transponders and antennas from an earth station. This process is known as telecommanding.

INTELSAT was formed in 1964 to operate and maintain the global satellite communications system. The agency designs and builds satellites, and organizes their launching.

NASA, the U.S. space organization, is the main agency in the world for launching satellites. NASA’s two and three stage Titan rockets safely launched all ten Gemini manned spacecraft, as well as numerous satellites.

E.S.A., the European space agency, has produced the Ariane launch vehicle as a rival to Titan. For a 1.2 tone geostationary satellite an Ariane launch costs $30 million, compared to $75 million by Titan. However, although it is more costly, Titan is also more reliable with 119 successful launches out of 122.

The Ariane consists of three stages, each of which is a pair of fuel tanks with one or more rocket engines. The fuel from the two tanks burns when mixed in the engine. The large first stage lifts, the vehicle through the atmosphere, and when the fuel tanks are empty the section falls away, igniting the second stage. The process is repeated by the second stage, then the third stage, which carries a computer and directional equipment in its front end, and manoeuvres the satellite into position

         Expendable launch vehicles such as Titan and Ariane now face strong competition from NASA’s new generation of re-usable "Space Shuttle" launch vehicles. Although the cost of a shuttle is as high as a billion dollars, the airplane like spacecraft is designed to go into orbit repeatedly, thus reducing the cost of launching a satellite to around $16 million.

The space shuttle is launched with the aid of two booster rockets and an external fuel tank. When the boosters are no longer needed they fall to earth by parachute, to be picked up from the sea and used again. Later the fuel tank is released, but this is not recovered. Once In orbit, the orbiter uses its own engines to manoeuvre. After the mission the shuttle re-enters the earth's atmosphere and lands on a runway in the same way as an aircraft.

        

Choose the correct answer:

1)  Which two of the following subjects do you think the author deals with in this text.

a)     To build space stations.

b)    Use of rockets for launching satellites.

c)     Description of the Ariane and the Titan.

d)    A world service telecommunications system.

e)     Role of satellites in modern communications.

 

Answer these questions:

1)     Is it possible to have today worldwide communications? Why/why not.

2)     How are satellites put into orbit?

3)     Why does the ionosphere make long distance communication difficult?

4)     To what does the author compare a rocket orbiting without power?

5)     How are space stations built in an orbit?

6)     What is the function of a repeater?

7)     Why would satellite systems be cheaper to run?

8)     What are the main characteristics of new satellites?

9)     Which earth stations receive transmissions?

10)What is the name of the International Satellite Communication Organization?

11)What are the names of the American and European Space Organizations?

12)Which is the cheapest way to launch a satellite? Why?

13)Which is the most expensive and the most reliable vehicle?

14)How frequently can a space shuttle be used?

 

True or False:

Decide whether the following statements are true or false by referring to the information in the text. Then make the necessary changes so that the false statements, become true.

1)     A space station acts as a repeater.

2)     For a world service only two stations are needed.

3)     The Telstar was launched in 1957.

4)     Satellites are used only for T.V. and telephone transmissions.

5)     Earth stations can control satellites.

6)     INTELSAT was formed in 1964 to send monkeys to the moon.

7)     INTELSAT designs and builds satellites, and organizes their launching.

8)     After the mission the shuttle desintegrates.

 

Find and give the Information:

1)     Distance from the earth needed by a rocket to circle it once every 24 hours.

2)     The year in which the first telecommunications satellite was launched.

3)     The duration of a Telstar transmission.

4)     The capacity of Intelsat I.

5)     The percentage of international telephone traffic relayed by Intelsat V.

 

Locating Information

Find the passages in the text where the following ideas are expressed. Give the line references.

1)     The ionosphere poses problems to communications.

2)     To cover the whole world several stations are needed.

3)     The first satellites had a very limited capacity compared to the new ones.

4)     The signals sent off by the satellite are received by some earth stations.

5)     Not all rockets cost the same.

6)     One type pf launching vehicle can be used more than once.

 

Content review.

Find words with this meaning in the text.

a) Rocket used to give initial speed to a missile, after which it drops and leaves the missile to continue under its own power.

b) The planet on which we live.

d)    Object for relaying back to the earth telephone messages, radio o TV signals.

e)     Band of frequencies within which signals from a transmitter must be kept to prevent interference.

f)      Outline from which something will be made.

 

Replacing terms.

Choose a word or phrase from the text to replace the underlined word.

a) To provide a link between two locations.

b) The ionosphere can produce difficulties in telecommunications.

c) Some satellites orbit the earth once every 24 hours,

d) A satellite could relay transmmissions to one half of the earth.

e) Earth stations are able to detect very low level signals.

f) The Ariane is composed of three stages.

 

Text summary.

Refer back to the text and choose the six most important points from this list in order to get a summary:

1) Intelsat I had only 240 telephone channels.

2) The first manmade satellite was launched in October 4, 1957.

3) At least three stations are needed for a world service.

4) The world needs a telecommunications system.

5) The shuttle system reduces the cost of launching a satellite.

6) It is possible to control the satellites from an earth station.

7) INTELSAT organizes satellite launching.

8) Space stations can be built in an orbit.

9) The use of satellites in today's world communications is a must.

10) Rockets are used for putting the communications satellites into orbit.

 

Listening

“What goes up must come down”

         Listen to the text and complete sentences with numbers:

12,000    40,000        100            9.8        2Ң           100         26        2800        3,000

         1) The bullet starts going up really fast. If it's a good rifle it might be doing about ___kilometres an hour.

         2) You probably studied this in school: falling objects accelerate at ___ metres per second and things going up decelerate at the same rate.

         3) If you try doing a rapid calculation you can quickly see that the bullet will not get into space, which begins at a height of about ___  kilometres.        

         4) The cannon ball had to reach a speed of ___ yards per second.

         5) The modern figure, 11,100 m/s or about ___ kilometres an hour, is called "escape velocity".

         6) The only way to fly to a height of ___  kilometres is with an engine that will keep your craft moving upwards after it has left the ground.

         7) The height record for a jet airplane is nearly ___  km.

         8) After ___  minutes you are travelling at nearly 10,000 km an hour.

         9) At lift-off, the Apollo rockets weighed ___ tons but they used about 2,000 tons of fuel in those first 2Ң minutes.

 

True or False:

Decide whether the following statements are true or false by referring to the information in the text. Then make the necessary changes so that the false statements, become true.

1) A bullet is faster than a rocket taking off.

2) If you shoot a bullet straight up it will go higher than Everest.

3) Jet engines don't work at 11,000 metres.

4) The air is too thin to breathe at 11,000 metres.

5) A rocket accelerates more as it goes up.

6) When something starts to fall it decelerates.

7) There are usually problems during the countdown for the launch of a rocket.

8) The sky is black in space.

9) Jules Verne calculated the speed of the cannonball in his story correctly.

10) Rocket engines are very quiet.

 

Text 9C

 

Space Shuttle

 

The space shuttle was made to take astronauts and cargo to and from Earth orbit. The first space shuttle flight took place in 1981. NASA stopped flying the shuttle in 2011.

The space shuttle normally takes as many as seven astronauts to and from space. The space shuttle has done many kinds of jobs. It has launched satellites from its cargo bay. It had been a science laboratory while orbiting Earth. Its crews had fixed other spacecraft, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The space shuttle used to work on the International Space Station.

The space shuttle has three main parts. The first part is the orbiter. The orbiter is the large, white space plane. It is the only part of the shuttle that goes into orbit. The orbiter is where the crew members live and work. It also has a payload bay for taking cargo into orbit. The second part of the shuttle is the external tank. This large, orange fuel tank connects to the bottom of the orbiter for launch. The third part is really two pieces. Two white solid rocket boosters send out most of the thrust for the first two minutes of a shuttle launch. The solid rocket boosters are long and thin.

The space shuttle takes off like a rocket. The solid rocket boosters and the main engines on the orbiter provide the thrust for launch. The solid rocket boosters burn for about two minutes. Then they are dropped from the shuttle and fall into the ocean. Special boats bring them back so they can be used again. The shuttle’s main engines fire for about another six minutes. The external tank is dropped when all the fuel has been used. Shortly after this happens the shuttle and crew are in orbit.
          The orbiter lands like a glider. While in orbit it fires its engines to slow down and stop orbiting. After it re-enters Earth's atmosphere, it glides in for a landing on a runway.

 

Space Shuttle

 

Space shuttle is reusable space vehicle used for travel between a space station and Earth. Look at the picture and complete the table:

 

 

1	a) part of the shuttle used for turning
2	b) shuttle systems that are used as ailerons and rudders
3	c) the shuttle's system of locomotion
4	d) engine used to steer the shuttle
5	e) engines that enable the shuttle to enter and leave space
6	f) system used to catch a satellite in need of repair
7	g) system of positioning by the stars
8	h) lift plane of the shuttle
9	i) part of the shuttle where astronauts can work and pilot the shuttle without wearing spacesuits
10	j) part of the shuttle that, when open, provides access to the payload
11	k) system that alters or stabilizes the altitude of the shuttle
12	l) light that announces a link-up if two space vehicle
13	m) system used to start the shuttle in an emergency
14	n) hinged movable shuttle panel
15	o) part of the shuttle containing stored fuel

 

 

Space Shuttle Flight Sequence

 

Look at the scheme of space shuttle flight sequence (order of the different operations of the flight) and match each stage with definition:

 

 

 

Stage	Definition
1 Pre-launch	a) the external tank detaches from the orbiter
2 Launching	b) work to be done while the orbiter is in orbit
3 Solid rocket boosters separate	c) the orbiter sets down on earth
4 External tank separates	d) the rocket, emptied of its propellants, falls in ocean before being recovered
5 Orbit around the earth	e) part of the flight sequence of the space shuttle before launch
6 Orbital operation	f) the orbiter leaves orbit to return to earth
7 End of mission	g) place where missions are prepared
8 Leaving earth's orbit	h) separation of the external solid-rocket boosters
9 Landing	i) all experiments have been completed
10 Space centre	j) repeated circling of the planet
11 Rockets parachute into sea	k) start of the ascent of the shuttle

 

Space Shuttle Quiz

At its best, the space shuttle is the embodiment of 20th-century scientific progress, a stunningly complex vehicle that can lift into space, orbit the Earth, return to Earth's atmosphere, and be re-used in a matter of weeks. At its worst, the shuttle is a symbol of the dangers that come with space travel. How did the shuttle program begin? And what keeps astronauts alive in the depths of outer space? Choose the correct answer:

1) How long does a typical space shuttle mission last?

a)     seven to eight days

b)    about three weeks

c)     between two and three months

2) What percentage of the thrust necessary to lift a space shuttle do the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) provide?

a)     50 percent

b)    71 percent

c)     100 percent

3) The main engine's external fuel tank primarily contains:

a)     liquid oxygen

b)    liquid hydrogen

c)     liquid nitrogen

4) Which of the following is not a reason the external fuel tank is covered with a special, inch-thick layer of foam insulation?

a)     to keep the fuel cold

b)    to minimize ice formation

c)     to stabilize the tank so that it doesn't dislodge after ignition

5) Which of the following occurs at T plus 8.5 minutes of a typical shuttle launch?

a)     the shuttle engines are at maximum throttle

b)    the external fuel tank separates from the orbiter

c)     the main engines shut down

6) What part of the shuttle orbiter contains the main engines?

a)     the aft fuselage

b)    the forward fuselage

c)     the forward RCS module

7) Which of the following best describes the communication system between Mission Control and the shuttle orbiter?

a)     Mission Control sends a signal directly to the shuttle, using the S-band system for audio.

b)    A signal is sent to a radio antenna, which relays the signal to satellites, and then on to the shuttle.

c)     Mission Control sends a signal to a station in California, which sends a signal directly to the shuttle.

8) Why does NASA place more than 100 cameras around the launch pad to film the shuttle during liftoff?

a)     They record the liftoff in an effort to detect possible debris or damage to the shuttle that occurred.

b)    They record the liftoff from different angles so that they have footage for the official documentary.

c)     They record the liftoff to ensure that experiments on the exterior of the orbiter occur without incident.

9) What U.S. president announced the development of the space shuttle?

a)     John F. Kennedy

b)    Lyndon B. Johnson

c)     Richard M. Nixon

10) Which space shuttle made the first flight in 1981, piloted by astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen?

a)     Columbia

b)    Challenger

c)     Discovery

 

Unit 10

NASA

Text 10A

 

NASA

 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established on October 1, 1958, a year after the USSR sent Sputnik, the first earth satellite, into space. In 1961, after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, the new agency was assigned responsibility for meeting President Kennedy's commitment to put a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Accomplishing the goal under this strict time constraint was an enormous challenge. By 1966, the 10,000 people employed at the space agency in 1960 had grown to 36,000. NASA's annual budget increased from $500 million in 1960 to a high point of $5.2 billion in 1965, 5.3 percent of the federal budget for that year. Approximately 50 percent of that amount went directly for human spaceflight; the vast majority of that went directly toward Apollo. The project eventually cost $24 billion. According to John Noble Wilford, space correspondent for the New York Times, Apollo was the "greatest mobilization of men and resources ever undertaken for a peaceful project of science and exploration."№

When NASA began operations in October of 1958, it absorbed into it the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics intact; it’s 8,000 employees, an annual budget of $100 million, three major research laboratories--Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory--and two smaller test facilities. It quickly incorporated other organizations into the new agency, notably the space science group of the Naval Research Laboratory in Maryland, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology for the Army, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama.

With the advent of Apollo, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory took over responsibility for developing the necessary guidance and communications technologies and for learning more about the lunar environment. The Marshall Space Flight Center was formed around the Army's ballistic missile team at Redstone Arsenal, which was led by Dr. Wernher von Braun and the other engineers who had developed the first successful rocket, the German V-2. Marshall was responsible for building and testing the rockets to power the spacecraft.

NASA created three new facilities specifically to meet the demands of the lunar landing program. In 1962 the agency built the Manned Spacecraft Center (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973), near Houston, Texas, to design the Apollo spacecraft and the launch platform for the lunar lander. This center also became the home of NASA's astronauts and the site of mission control. The scientists and engineers in the control room monitored all the details of the moon flight once the rocket was launched. The Launch Operations Center (renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center in 1963) at Cape Canaveral on Florida's eastern seacoast was greatly enlarged. All of the Saturn/Apollo rockets were assembled in Kennedy's huge 36-story Vehicle Assembly Building and fired from Launch Complex 39. Finally, in October 1961, NASA created the Mississippi Test Facility, renamed the John C. Stennis Space Center in 1988. It was here that the Saturn rockets were tested. The cost of this expansion was great, more than $2.2 billion over the decade.

NASA's leaders made an early decision to rely upon outside researchers and technicians to complete the Apollo project. Between 80 and 90 percent of NASA's overall budget in the 1960s went for contracts to purchase goods and services from private industry, research institutions, and universities. Contractor employees working on the program increased more than 10 times, from 36,500 in 1960 to 376,700 in 1965. NASA found that this was both good politics and the best way of getting Apollo done on time. It was also very nearly the only way to harness talent and institutional resources already in existence in the emerging aerospace industry and the country's leading research universities.

More than 500 contractors worked on both large and small aspects of Apollo. For example, the Boeing Company was the prime contractor for the first stage of the Saturn rocket, North American Aviation for the second stage, and the Douglas Aircraft Corporation for the third stage. The Rocket dyne Division of North American Aviation was responsible for the rocket engines and International Business Machines for the instruments. These prime contractors, with more than 250 subcontractors, provided millions of parts and components for use in the Saturn launch vehicle, all meeting exacting specifications for performance and reliability.

Getting all of these people to work together challenged the men and women responsible for managing the program, whether they worked for the Federal Government, a private industry, or a university. According to Dr. Leonard R. Sayles and Dr. Margaret K. Chandler of the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, NASA's most significant contribution was "getting an organizationally complex structure, involving a great variety of people doing a great variety of things in many separate locations, to do what you want, when you want it--and while the decision regarding the best route to your objective is still in the process of being made by you and your collaborators."

 

Answer the questions:

1) What event led to the creation of NASA? What event contributed to the decision to send an American to the Moon by the end of the 1960s?

2) What evidence indicates that the Cold War affected the American space program? Why do you think the program was sometimes called "the space race?"

3) How many different kinds of work and workers can you identify from this reading?

4) Why was the work for the Apollo program spread out over so many sites? What do you think the advantages and disadvantages might have been if it had been concentrated in one place? Discuss.

5) Why did the project rely so heavily on private industry, research institutions, and universities? What advantages and disadvantages do you think this might have had over using government employees exclusively?

 

         Listening

“America's Space Agency Turns 50”

         Listen to American radio program and match dates and events:

Date	Event
1 July, 2008	a) The Soviets put Yuri Gagarin into orbit around the Earth.  NASA had been beaten to its first goal
2 on July twenty-ninth, nineteen fifty-eight	b) Project Mercury was a success scientifically and in the opinion of the American public. All of the first six space flights were in small one-man capsules.  Tom Wolfe wrote a book about the first astronauts and their flights, called "The Right Stuff." These brave astronauts became American heroes.  They included John Glenn who was the first American to orbit the Earth
3 on October fourth, nineteen fifty-seven	c) The success of Apollo ended the space race.  It also provided a chance for Americans and Soviets to join in the first international space flight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.  The project was the start of cooperation in space.  It was also the end of the first part of NASA's manned spaceflight program
4 on October first, nineteen fifty-eight	d) NASA has visited Mars more often than any other planet.  Mars continues to interest scientists searching for life because it is known to have water.  Mariner spacecraft first visited the planet
5 in April, nineteen sixty-one	e) In the last fifty years, NASA has sent robotic spacecraft to the moon and all the planets. The space agency first started to explore other planets with the Mariner probes.  A series of Mariner spacecraft visited the planet Venus.  Years later, the Magellan spacecraft mapped Venus in great detail
6 on May twenty-fifth, nineteen sixty-one	f) the Viking One and Two spacecraft returned detailed pictures of the red planet.  The Viking project also put landers on Mars and tested its soil
7 in nineteen sixty-two	g) The space shuttle program is closely linked with international efforts to have a permanent presence in space.  The shuttle has helped build the International Space Station whose first crew arrived in ___.  The Space Station was completed in two thousand ten
8 In early nineteen sixty-seven	h) NASA is already planning the next generation of exploration vehicles.  They include the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and a reusable moon lander.  And NASA plans to establish a center to produce power on the moon
9 on July twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine	i) Mariner Ten visited Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.  NASA returned to Mercury in two thousand eight with the Messenger spacecraft
10 in nineteen seventy-two	j) The shuttle Columbia came apart while reentering the Earth's atmosphere. Seven more astronauts died.  These incidents remind everyone of the risk of space travel and the bravery and sacrifice of the astronauts
11 in July of nineteen seventy-five	k) the shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts.  Two years later, the shuttle program returned and flew eighty-seven successful missions
12 In nineteen seventy-two	l) The Soviet Union had become the first country to put an object into orbit around the Earth.  The successful launch of the Sputnik satellite marked the start of "the space race"
13 in November of two thousand	m) President Richard Nixon approved a completely new space project.  It would be the world's first reusable space vehicle.  The project was the space shuttle program--officially known as the Space Transportation System.  Shuttle Columbia, one of five orbiters
14 In January of nineteen eighty-six	n) The most exciting mission was Apollo Eleven.  It landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon's Sea of Tranquility.  Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon
15 in February, two thousand three	o) the United States space agency celebrates its fiftieth anniversary
16 In the nineteen sixties	p) Five more flights landed on the moon, ending with Apollo Seventeen.  A total of twelve Americans walked on the moon. Steven Dick, NASA's chief historian, has written about the effect of the Apollo project on society, especially its view of Earth from the moon.  He wrote: "The photographs of 'Earthrise", and of the full Earth as a blue marble suspended in space, fragile and without national boundaries, changed humankind's view of Earth forever"
17 In nineteen seventy-four	q) Project Apollo was NASA's biggest effort up to that time.  The Apollo spacecraft could hold three astronauts.  It was powered by a huge Saturn Five rocket, the first rocket designed by NASA only for space exploration.  But the project began with tragedy: three astronauts were killed in a fire while testing Apollo One
18 in the nineteen sixties	r) President John F. Kennedy gave NASA a greater goal, bigger than anyone had considered at that time
19 In the mid nineteen seventies	s) NASA was established, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act. The agency was created mainly because of competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union
20 by two thousand twenty-four	t) NASA began operations from headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Its first major goal was to show that people could survive and work in space.  This was called Project Mercury. NASA chose seven military pilots to be the nation's first astronauts

 

Quiz: NASA Turns Fifty

1) This type of spin stabilized spacecraft made successful explorations of the Sun, Earth's Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.

a) Mercury VII

b) Pioneer

c) Saturn V

d) Jupiter C

2) Previous to the creation of NASA, Explorer I was launched into orbit by the United States. Who was responsible for the project?

a) CIA

b) U.S. Air Force

c) U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency

d) University of Iowa

3) The Viking missions to Mars were to involve orbiters and landers that took how long to reach their destination?

a) three years

b) ten to eleven months

c) six to eight weeks

d) they never functionally arrived

4) For all of the splash that Skylab made, how long was it manned by NASA?

a) Skylab was unmanned

b) eighty four days

c) twenty four weeks

d) three years

5) The space probe 'Galileo' was launched from the cargo bay of Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1989, traveled approximately 2.8 billion miles, and crashed into what, ending its mission?

a) Jupiter

b) the Indian ocean

c) an asteroid

d) Mars

6) Everyone is familiar with Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong, who was the first to set foot on the moon. Others will recall the transmission of the ill fated Apollo 13, "Houston, we have a problem". How many Apollo flights actually made safe lunar landings?

a) 3

b) 17

c) 11

d) 6

7) If you have "the Right Stuff", you can spot the astronaut who was NOT one of the "Mercury Seven" astronauts.

a) Slayton

b) Cooper

c) Young

d) Schirra

8) What was the name of the Space Mission that bridged the gap between John Glenn's flight and the Apollo space mission?

a) Gemini

b) Titan

c) Friendship

d) Mercury

9) Perhaps the most noted Space Shuttle mission was the Challenger tragedy of January 28, 1986. Had the tragedy not occurred, what was the mission for the Challenger STS-51L?

a) launch and retrieve the Spartan satellite

b) Teacher in Space experiments

c) study Haley's Comet

d) all are correct

10) By the time the Space Shuttle Atlantis docked for the first time with Russia's MIR Space Station in 1995, the two vehicles were directly above what famous geographical feature?

a) Mt. Rushmore

b) The White House

c) Lake Baikal

d) Chernobyl

 

Speaking

         Work in pairs and discuss projects of NASA:

         a) Project Mercury

         b) Project Gemini

         c) Project Apollo

         d) Apollo Eleven

         e) Apollo Seventeen

         f) Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

         g) The space shuttle program

         h) Mariner spacecraft

         i) Voyagers

         j) The Galileo

         k) Mariner spacecraft

         l) Mars exploration

         m) Moon exploration

 

Text 10B

 

Aerospace engineering

 

Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering behind the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is broken into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. The former deals with craft that stay within Earth's atmosphere, and the latter deals with craft that operates outside of Earth's atmosphere.

While aeronautical engineering was the original term, the broader "aerospace" has superseded it in usage, as flight technology advanced to include craft operating in outer space. Aerospace engineering, particularly the astronautics branch, is often informally called rocket science.

Flight vehicles undergo severe conditions such as differences in atmospheric pressure, and temperature, with structural loads applied upon vehicle components. Consequently, they are usually the products of various technological and engineering disciplines including aerodynamics, propulsion, avionics, materials science, structural analysis and manufacturing. These technologies are collectively known as aerospace engineering. Because of the complexity of the field, aerospace engineering is conducted by a team of engineers, each specializing in their own branches of science.

The development and manufacturing of a modern flight vehicle is an extremely complex process and demands careful balance and compromise between abilities, design, available technology and costs. Aerospace engineers design, test, and supervise the manufacture of aircraft, spacecraft, and missiles. Aerospace engineers develop new technologies for use in aviation, defense systems, and space exploration.

 

         Answer the questions:

         1) What does  term  “Aerospace engineering” mean?

         2) What does aeronautical engineering study?

         3) What does astronautical engineering deal with?

         4) What conditions do flight vehicles undergo?

         5) What technologies are collectively known as aerospace engineering?

         6) What do the development and manufacturing of a modern flight vehicle demand?

         7) What are Aerospace engineers responsible for?

 

Unit 11

Technologies in Space

Text 11A

 

Life on Mars?

 

The position of Mars in the Solar System makes it a good candidate for the investigation of life outside of the Earth. It is the fourth of the four inner terrestrial planets from the Sun, the Earth being the third, and the fact that it is relatively close to Earth suggests that there could be some similarities between the two. Such similarities would be encouraging to scientists looking for life on Mars, but in order to determine whether the conditions on Mars allow for the chemical evolution of life to take place it is logical to look back to a time and a place where we know that life did appear - the Earth 4,000 million years ago - and to compare these conditions with current conditions on Mars.

Mars is a rocky planet with a core radius of 1,700 km, less than half that of the Earth. The atmosphere is 95.32% carbon dioxide, but it is thin, with a mass 60 times smaller than the atmosphere on Earth. The thin atmosphere lessens the greenhouse effect on the planet as there are fewer carbon dioxide molecules to absorb the solar radiation which explains why the average surface temperature of Mars is minus 60 degrees C. It is not surprising, then, that there is no liquid water on Mars.

There are reasons to suspect similarities between the conditions on Mars now and the conditions on Earth 4,000 million years ago. The young sun emitted 20–30% less solar radiation than it does today, which would have greatly affected the Earth's temperature. This suggests that, like Mars today, the Earth would probably have been very cold at the surface, possibly even cold enough to cause ocean waters to freeze. Unlike Mars, however, the atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide was very thick on Earth 4,000 million years ago, meaning that there were more carbon dioxide molecules to absorb the solar radiation. This would have played an important role in increasing the Earth’s temperature. In addition to the thick atmosphere, the interior of the Earth, being much hotter 4,000 million years ago, would have provided more heat to the Earth radiating out from within. This could have allowed for liquid water to exist on Earth underneath a layer of ice. This idea is an attractive one because the liquid water could have supported organic molecules and the layer of ice would have provided some protection from harmful UV radiation. Earth 4,000 million years ago, then, was a much more hospitable environment for life to develop than Mars today.

Although we have very set ideas about what is needed for chemical evolution to take place, if we found evidence of life on planets without these conditions we would have to re-think our ideas. The Viking landing mission to Mars in 1976 came close to this when three experiments designed to test for the presence of microbial organisms appeared to exhibit positive results on a planet with no liquid water. These positive results are generally thought to be caused by chemical reactions rather than life, because it was not thought possible for life to exist in such varied conditions. However, discoveries of organisms in extreme conditions on Earth have forced us to reconsider this view. Nevertheless, as there was no evidence of organic matter whatsoever on Mars from the Viking mission, the likelihood of anything alive existing on Mars today appears remote.

There are, however, reasons to suspect that conditions on Mars in the past were more favourable for chemical evolution. Although there is no liquid water on Mars today, observations by the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey suggest that markings on the Martian surface indicate the presence of a great deal of liquid water on Mars in the past. Scientists believe that Mars had a thick atmosphere 3,800 million years ago, and was therefore much warmer than today. This means it would be more likely to hold liquid water on its surface as the warmer temperatures would prevent water from freezing and the thick atmosphere would generate a greater atmospheric pressure to prevent all liquid water at the surface from vaporizing.

In conclusion, although conditions on Earth 4,000 million years ago were harsh, the key requirement for chemical evolution, liquid water, was present. This is not the case on Mars today. Organic material was also nowhere to be found on Mars, so it is fair to assume that it is very unlikely that chemical evolution is occurring on Mars today. We cannot, however, rule out the possibility until we have explored the planet much further. The indication that 3,800 million years ago Mars had a much more Earth-like climate suggests that the key to finding life on Mars lies in the planet's past rather than its present, and that this is a subject we should definitely investigate further.

 

Answer the questions:

1) According to the text, is it likely that there is life on Mars now? How about in the past?

2) Why do scientists observing Mars take an interest in Earth 4,000 million years ago?

3) Why is a thick atmosphere so important for life to develop?

4) Is there anything in the text that you found surprising?

5         ) How much of the information in the text did you already know?

6         ) Do you know anyone who knows enough about Mars to have written this text?

7         ) What level of education do you need to produce a text like this?

8)Do you think there is life on Mars now?

9) Do you think there ever was life there?

10) Does it make you feel excited to think that there might have been life on Mars?

11) Have you ever seen Mars through a telescope?

12) How long do you think it will be before humans travel to other planets?

13) Do you think humans will ever leave the Earth and find homes on other planets?

14) Do you think there is other intelligent life out there somewhere?

15) If someone were to visit Earth from another planet, what would they find most strange about us humans?

16) Do you find space particularly interesting? Why/why not?

17) Do you enjoy science fiction books or movies? If so, which do you prefer and why?

18) When it comes to space, do you think that truth is stranger than fiction?

 

True or false?

a) Scientists are interested in investigating the possibility of life on Mars because its distance from the Sun is relatively similar to that of the Earth.

b) The more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more the sun can warm the surface of a planet.

c) The sun is not as strong now as it was 4,000 million years ago.

d) The thick atmosphere was by far the most important reason why the Earth was not too cold to support life 4,000 million years ago.

e) The temperature of the surface of the Earth depends entirely on the heat that comes from the sun.

f) Scientists are too stubborn to change their ideas about how life can originate on a planet.

g) The Viking Mission proved conclusively that life exists on Mars.

h) Since the Viking mission, scientists have become slightly less skeptical about the validity of some of its findings.

i) The presence of liquid water on Mars in the past may have caused the planet to have a thicker atmosphere.

j) There used to be life on Mars.

 

        Find these words in the text, and try to work out the meaning from context. Do not use a dictionary. For each word, choose the most likely meaning, a or b.

        1 emitted (paragraph three)

        a) gave off     b) excluded

        2 molecules (paragraph three)

        a) reflects      b) very small units of a material or chemical

        3 hospitable (paragraph three)

a) unhealthy   b) comfortable and suitable

        4 microbial organisms (paragraph four)

a) small living things         b) chemicals

        5 Martian (paragraph five)

a) on, from or connected with Mars     b) the name of a spacecraft

        6 rule out (paragraph six)

a) say for sure that it’s impossible        b) say for sure that it’s true

 

Text 11B

 

The Apollo Hardware

        

James Webb, Administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968, described the formidable task facing the space agency in 1961:

The Apollo requirement was to take off from a point on the surface of the Earth that was traveling 1000 miles per hour as the Earth rotated, to go into orbit at 18,000 miles an hour, to speed up at the proper time to 25,000 miles an hour, to travel to a body in space 240,000 miles distant which was itself traveling 2000 miles per hour relative to the Earth, to go into orbit around this body, and to drop a specialized landing vehicle to its surface. There men were to make observations and measurements, collect specimens, leave instruments that would send back data on what we found, and then repeat much of the outward-bound process to get back home.

The lunar-orbit mode of flying to the Moon was selected only after fierce debate within NASA. It was the simplest of the three methods being considered, both in terms of development and costs, but it was risky. There was no room for error or the crew could not get home. Once the mode of flight was selected, NASA engineers could proceed with building a launch vehicle and creating the basic components of the spacecraft--a habitable crew compartment, a baggage car of some type, and a service module containing propulsion and other expendable systems that could be jettisoned on the trip back.

 

The Spacecraft

Almost with the announcement of the lunar landing commitment in 1961, NASA technicians began a crash program to develop a reasonable configuration for the trip to lunar orbit and back. What they came up with was a spacecraft that contained a three-person command module capable of sustaining human life for two weeks or more in either Earth or lunar orbit; a service module holding oxygen, maneuvering rockets, fuel cells, life support, and other equipment that could be jettisoned upon reentry to Earth; rockets for slowing the spacecraft to prepare for reentry; and finally a launch escape system that was discarded upon achieving orbit.

Work on the Apollo spacecraft began on November 28, 1961, when the prime contract for its development was left to North American Aviation. On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck. Three astronauts--"Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger B. Chaffee--were in the command module training on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. At 6:31 p.m., a fire broke out in the spacecraft. In a flash, flames engulfed the capsule and the astronauts died of asphyxiation. Shock gripped NASA and the nation during the days that followed. An investigation found that the accident could have been prevented. Changes to the spacecraft were quickly made, and within a little more than a year, it was ready for flight. By October 1968, Apollo 7 was ready to carry three astronauts into Earth orbit. There, they successfully tested the command/service module and helped restore confidence in the program by proving the space worthiness of the basic Apollo vehicle.

 

The Launch Vehicle

Boosting the Apollo vehicles to the Moon and returning them home safely was the job of the giant Saturn V. The Saturn family of rockets was developed by Wernher von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center. At 363 feet tall, the Saturn V was the first launch vehicle large enough that it had to be assembled away from the launch pad and transported there.

The Saturn V had three stages. The first stage generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust from five massive engines. The extreme heat and shock of firing these engines required new alloys and construction techniques, among the most significant engineering accomplishments of the program. The thunderous sound of the first test of the first stage at Huntsville on April 16, 1965, brought home to many that the Kennedy goal was within grasp. As fuel burned off, making the vehicle weigh less, the second stage fired to deliver 1 million pounds of thrust. The third stage burned to send Apollo out of Earth orbit and on its way to the Moon.

 

 

On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 took off with three astronauts aboard--Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders--for a historic mission to orbit the Moon. So far Apollo had been all promise; now the delivery was about to begin. The Apollo 8 crew rode inside the command module, with no lunar lander attached. They were the first astronauts to be launched by the Saturn V, which had flown only twice before. The booster worked perfectly, as did the Service Propulsion System (SPS) engines that had been checked out on Apollo 7. As it traveled outward the crew focused a portable television camera on the Earth. For the first time humanity saw its home from afar--a tiny, lovely, and fragile "blue marble" hanging in the blackness of space. Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit on the morning of December 24, 1968. For the next 20 hours the astronauts circled the Moon. They took photographs and scouted future landing sites. They also photographed the first Earthrise as seen from the Moon. Apollo 8 proved the ability to navigate to and from the Moon, and gave a tremendous boost to the entire Apollo program.

 

The Lunar Module

The Apollo lunar module, or LM, was the first true spacecraft-designed to fly only in a vacuum, with no aerodynamic qualities whatsoever. Launched attached to the Apollo command/service module, it separated in lunar orbit and descended to the Moon with two astronauts inside. At the end of their stay on the surface, the lunar module's ascent stage fired its own rocket to rejoin the command/service module in lunar orbit.

The Saturn launch vehicle and the Apollo spacecraft were difficult technological challenges, but the lunar module, the third part of the hardware for the Moon landing, represented the most serious problem. Begun a year later than it should have been, the lunar module was consistently behind schedule and over budget. Much of the problem turned on the difficulty of devising two separate components--one for descending to the surface of the Moon and one for returning to the command module. Both engines had to work perfectly or the very real possibility existed that the astronauts would not return home.

The launch vehicle, the spacecraft, and the lunar module were manufactured many hundreds of miles from each other. Transported by specially fitted ocean-going ships and aircraft to the Kennedy Space Center, they came together for the first time in the huge Vehicle Assembly Building. In March 1969 the crew of Apollo 9 tested the third piece of Apollo hardware--the Lunar Module. For ten days, the astronauts put all three Apollo vehicles through their paces in Earth orbit, undocking and then redocking the lunar lander with the command module, just as they would in lunar orbit. Two of the astronauts performed a space walk, and one checked out the new Apollo spacesuit, the first to have its own life support system rather than being dependent on an umbilical connection to the spacecraft. This mission paved the way for a dress rehearsal for a Moon landing with Apollo 10 and the subsequent success of Apollo 11.

 

Answer the questions:

1)Read James Webb's description of what was involved in landing a man on the Moon. What kinds of things do you think could have gone wrong?

2)Why do you suppose there were so many disputes within NASA about the method of flying to the Moon?

3)Even though the spacecraft that Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were supposed to fly never reached space, NASA formally designated it Apollo 1. Why do you think they did that?

4)What was the significance of Apollo 7?

5) What happened for the first time when Saturn V launched Apollo 8 to orbit the moon? What might that have been like for the people witnessing this historic moment?

6)Which of the three components do you think presented the greatest engineering challenges? Why?

7)Which was the most critical to the success of the Apollo mission?

 

Text 11C

 

Shuttle and ISS garb

During ascent to and descent from orbit, Space Shuttle astronauts wear special orange partial pressure suits with helmet, gloves, and boots in case of a loss of cabin pressure. Once in orbit, crew members inside the Shuttle enjoy shirtsleeve comfort. To work in the Shuttle's open cargo bay or perform other tasks outside the spacecraft, they don spacesuits known as extravehicular mobility units (EMUs), more durable and flexible than any previous suits. The EMU is modular enabling it to be built up from a number of parts depending on the particular task in hand. Also, the upper torso, lower torso, arms, and gloves are not individually tailored but made in a variety of sizes that can be put together in combinations to fit any-sized crew member, man or woman. Each suit has supplies for a 6.5-hour spacewalk plus a 30-minute reserve and is pressurized to just under one third of atmospheric pressure. Before donning the suit, astronauts spend several hours breathing pure oxygen because the suit also uses 100% oxygen whereas the habitable decks on the Shuttle use an Earth-normal 21% oxygen/79% nitrogen mixture at atmospheric pressure (reduced to 0.69 atmospheres before an EVA). This preparation is necessary to remove nitrogen dissolved in body fluids to prevent its release as gas bubbles when pressure is reduced, a condition commonly called the bends.

 

Extravehicular mobility unit

The following parts of the EMU go on first: a urine-collection device, a liquid-cooled  undergarment plumbed with 100 m of plastic tubing through which water circulates, an in-suit drink bag containing 600 grams of potable water, a communications system (known as the Snoopy Cap) with headphones and microphones, and a biomedical instrumentation package. Next the astronaut pulls on the flexible lower torso assembly before rising into the stiff upper section which hangs on the wall of the airlock. The upper torso is a hard fiberglass structure that contains the primary life support system and the display control module. Connections between the two parts must be aligned to enable circulation of water and gas into the liquid cooling ventilation garment and return. Then the gloves are added and finally the extravehicular visor and helmet assembly.

 

         Answer the questions:

         1)When do Space Shuttle astronauts wear special orange partial pressure suits with helmet, gloves, and boots?

         2) What advantages do extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) have?

         3) Are the upper torso, lower torso, arms, and gloves individually tailored for each astronaut?

         4) Why do astronauts spend several hours breathing pure oxygen before donning the suit?

         5) What parts of the EMU go on first?

         6)What does the astronaut pulls on the flexible lower torso assembly before rising into the stiff upper section which hangs on the wall of the airlock?

         7) What does the upper torso (a hard fiberglass structure) contain?

         8) Why are connections between the two parts very important?

 

 

 

 

Listening

“The Evolution of Spacesuits”

 We are going to listen to Special English program about the special clothes astronauts wear that protect them while they work in space. For questions 1-17 complete the sentence:

         1) A person cannot work in the extremes of space without many different kinds of ___.

         2) ___ from the sun is another environmental risk in space.

         3) An astronaut who does work outside the space shuttle usually is wearing more than ___ pieces of protective equipment.

         4) At about ___ meters, the air is so thin and the amount of oxygen so small that a person needs a lot of special equipment to survive.

         5) A well-known American flyer, Wiley Post, designed one of the first successful devices to protect a ___ at extreme heights in nineteen-thirty-three.

         6) Astronauts in NASA’s Mercury Program flew the first American space flights in the early ___.

7) When air pressure filled the early spacesuit, astronauts found it difficult to move their ___ or ___.

8) Today, astronauts wear very different protective clothing. It lets them move, do useful tasks, and stay outside their spacecraft in comfort and safety for ___hours.

9) The EMU (extravehicular mobility unit) has a number of parts that an astronaut can link together by using only ___.

10) Wearing the whole EMU can add as much as ___ kilograms to your weight.

11) You will also wear something called the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment. This piece of clothing is worn next to the skin. It helps keep the body ___ by moving water through many small tubes that cover the device.

         12) A special hat on your head is made of soft cloth. It also carries several ___ devices including earphones and microphones.

         13) The lower part of the spacesuit is next. It is called the Lower Torso Assembly. It is like putting on a large pair of pants that have boots built in the bottom of the ___.

         14) The life support system supplies the oxygen needed for breathing and the air pressure necessary to protect your body. The upper part of the spacesuit also carries an emergency oxygen system in case the first system ___.

         15) An important part of your spacesuit is the ___. It lets you observe and control your oxygen system. It is also the place you find the controls for your communications equipment.

         16) NASA scientists are also considering the kind of spacesuits that would be needed for exploration on the planet Mars. Because of the gravity on Mars, spacesuits may have to be designed to be ___ than suits used in orbit or on the moon.

         17) All of the spacesuits that have returned from space belong to the Smithsonian Institution. Most of the suits are stored in a building about ten kilometers from Washington. They are kept in a room where air temperature and moisture levels are carefully ___.

 

Unit 12

People and Space

 

Text 12 A

 

Sally Ride

 

By Sharon Fabian

 

Sally Ride had the skills and the talent, and she loved science. She wasn't afraid to keep studying science, even when other girls decided that science was too hard, or when they said that science was a boys' subject. Sally Ride became so good at science that she got to be the first American woman in space.

As a science student, she had many demanding subjects to study. Space scientists take advanced courses in math and sciences. They study topics like calculus and physics, and that is just the beginning. These are not easy subjects, but when you are studying something you enjoy, it may be hard work, but the hard work is often fun too. Sally Ride must have really enjoyed space science. She went on to get her bachelor's degree, her master's degree, and her doctorate in science. Her field was astrophysics.

When she was 27 years old, Sally heard that NASA was looking for young men and women who were experts in science. At the time NASA wanted to hire 35 astronaut candidates. Sally applied for one of the jobs. At the time she wouldn't have had any way of knowing that 8,000 other men and women had applied too. Sally's application was one of the very best, and in 1978 she joined NASA and began astronaut training.

Even though she was a science expert, Sally didn't know much about flying a spacecraft. So she had more subjects to learn. She learned about flying. She learned about navigation. She learned about radio communication. She went through training on weightlessness, water survival, and parachute jumping. Sally must have enjoyed these new subjects that she was learning too. She especially liked flying; it became her new favourite hobby.

Sally did many different jobs for NASA. She worked as part of the ground crew for two Columbia flights, in 1981 and 1982. For those flights, she was a communications officer who sent radio messages back and forth between the ground crew and the shuttle itself.

Sally was chosen to go on a space flight in 1983. She became an astronaut aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Her job there was mission specialist. A mission specialist does many different things during a space flight. One of the things Sally did on this flight was to test a robot arm in space. This flight made her famous, because she was the first American woman in space. Here is what she had to say about that flight. "I'm sure it was the most fun I'll ever have in my life."

In 1984, Sally had the chance to go on a second space mission aboard Challenger. This time she spent eight days in space. All together, Sally spent 343 hours in space, a place most people can only dream of.

In 1987, at the age of 36, Sally retired from NASA. She went on to other science jobs at major universities and science centers. She had a mission now too, but it wasn't to go into space this time. Now her mission was to get more girls interested in science and to encourage girls to study science when they moved on to high school and college. She began an organization to promote girls' interest in science. If you are interested, you can look up Imaginary Lines or the Sally Ride Club on the Internet. You can find her children's books in the library. Two of them are To Space and Back and Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System.

With an approach like Dr. Ride's, most anything you can do with science is fun!

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) Sally Ride was ___.

         a) the first American woman in space

         b) the first woman pilot

         c) the first woman to study science in college

         d) the first American in space

2) Sally Ride’s name became Dr. Ride when ___.

         a) she graduated from college

         b) she received her doctorate degree

         c) she joined NASA and began astronaut training

         d) she flew in the Challenger

3) Space scientists need to know a lot of math.

         a) True

         b) False

4) When Sally applied to be an astronaut, how many other people applied too?

         a) 35

         b) 27

         c) 1978

         d) 8,000

5) Sally worked as a ground crew communication officer ___.

         a) after her second space flight

         b) before she went to college

         c) before she flew in space

         d) after she retired from NASA

6) All together, Sally spent a total of about ___ days in space.

         a) 12

         b) 14

         c) 10

         d) 8

7) The article says that Sally’s field of study was astrophysics. What do you think the word “astrophysics” mean?

         a) the science of making or flying planes

         b) the science of how objects move through the air

c) the science studying physical and chemical structure of the stars, planets and other objects in the universe

d) the science studying stars, planets and other objects in the universe.

 

Text 12B

 

Neil Armstrong

 

By Sharon Fabian

 

When you are planning to go on a trip, you have to get things ready. You have to pack. If you're going to the beach for a vacation, maybe you pack swimsuits, shorts, and T-shirts, but you might also pack a few warm clothes in case it gets cold at night. If you're planning a trip to someplace you've never been before, maybe you do a little research to find out what the weather is usually like there. Maybe you pack something to read, something to play with, or some sports equipment. If you're going on a business or a study trip, you pack the materials that you will need while you are there. You might look up the best route on a map, or ask someone for directions. You might fill up the gas tank in your car, or buy a plane ticket.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong was planning a trip. For this trip, he couldn't choose a route from a road map, and there was no one who had taken the same trip before, so he couldn't just ask for directions. Neil Armstrong was planning a trip to the moon. If the trip went as he planned, he would be the first person ever to set foot on the moon.

Armstrong and the other scientists at NASA had a lot of planning to do. Since both the earth and the moon are always moving, it would take a lot of very precise math to figure out how to get there and back. The weather would be unpredictable, as always, and might cause last minute changes in their plans. They had to choose a landing site. Since no one had ever been on the moon's surface, they had to make a scientific guess about where would be a good place to land, and they chose a place named the Sea of Tranquility.

They had to pack too. Armstrong and his crew, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, would have to take everything they would need for their eight-day journey. Not only would they have to pack all of their food, they would also need to take their own water, and even their own oxygen! They would need to pack special equipment to deal with the weightlessness in space and the low gravity on the moon. They needed to plan how they would keep warm in space. They also packed equipment for science experiments, including a seismograph, -- used to detect earthquakes (or moonquakes) -- and a laser that could be used to calculate the exact distance from the earth to the moon. They took a camera, and containers to bring samples back to Earth.

Planning for this trip also involved lots of training. The three astronauts had to relearn many everyday things. Simple activities like eating and moving around would require new skills in the weightless atmosphere of the spaceship.

Finally it was time to go. Everything was ready, and the weather was right. On July 16, a huge Saturn V rocket blasted Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin into orbit in their spacecraft, Apollo 11. For four days, they raced though space. Then, on July 20, while Collins orbited the moon in Apollo 11, Armstrong and Aldrin climbed into the Eagle, their lunar landing vehicle, and headed straight for the moon. The spot they had picked for a landing turned out to be too rocky, but the astronauts manoeuvred to a smoother area and landed. Armstrong was the first one to step out onto the moon. He had a short speech prepared for the occasion: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

They took pictures of the moon, collected samples of moon rocks, set up their experiments, and all together spent just two and one-half hours on the moon. They left behind footprints that are probably still there today.  Then they started on their journey home. On July 24 they splashed down in the ocean, safely back on earth. They must have been glad to be home, but what a trip it had been!

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) Apollo 11 carried ___ astronauts.

         a) one

         b) two

         c) three

         d) four

2) The module that landed on the Moon was called ___.

         a) The Eagle

         b) Apollo 11

         c) Saturn V

         d) Tranquility

3) The rocket that boosted them into space was called ___.

a)     Saturn V

b)    Apollo 11

c) Tranquility

d) The Eagle

 

Answer the questions

1) When was Neil Armstrong planning a trip?

2)Why would Armstrong and the other scientists at NASA take a lot of very precise math to figure out how to get there and back?

3) What place did Armstrong and the other scientists choose to land on the Moon?

4) What equipment did they pack?

5) When did a huge Saturn V rocket blast Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin into orbit in their spacecraft, Apollo 11?

6) How many days did they race though space?

7) What area did they choose to land?

8) What did they do on the moon?

9) When did they land?

10) Where did they land?

 

Text 12 C

 

John Glenn

 

                                                By Sharon Fabian

 

When John Glenn was a young man, he didn't plan on a career in space flight. Glenn was interested in a career in the military, and in aviation in particular. When he entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in 1942, he had no way of knowing that this would be the first step on his path to outer space.

Glenn's training in the cadet program prepared him to be a fighter pilot in World War II. Altogether he flew 59 combat missions in that war. After the war, Glenn became a flight training instructor, teaching young men who wanted to become pilots how to fly for the military. Then, in the Korean War, Glenn again flew combat missions as part of a marine fighter squadron. This time he flew a total of 63 missions.

Next, Glenn entered Test Pilot School. He was interested in the field of aircraft design. He also continued to fly. In fact, in 1957 John Glenn set a new speed record as he flew across the continent from Los Angeles to New York.

Glenn's career had been changing all along. As soon as he finished one job, he always looked for a new area to move into. But, in 1959 his career suddenly took off in an exciting new direction. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, chose Glenn to be part of a group of men who would train to be astronauts for the Mercury missions.

NASA had a space mission scheduled for 1962, and it chose John Glenn to be the astronaut. This mission, Mercury 6, would be a history-making mission, because the Mercury 6 astronaut would be the first American to orbit the earth in space.

This Mercury mission had simple but important objectives: to put a man in orbit, to observe his reactions to being in space, and to return him safely to earth.

The Mercury 6 spacecraft, named Friendship 7, was carefully designed to help Glenn, and the astronauts on the ground at Kennedy Space Centre, meet these objectives. The spacecraft had to protect Glenn from the tremendous heat and the acceleration forces that would occur as the spacecraft was launched and also as it re-entered the earth's atmosphere. It was designed to allow the astronaut inside to take over some of the controls. The body of the capsule would hold the astronaut himself, the life support system, and the spaceship's electrical system. The blunt end of the capsule was where the very important heat shield was located. At the opposite end were the parachutes that would be used on re-entry. A modified Atlas rocket would boost Mercury 6 into space.

The spacecraft was ready. So was Glenn.

The countdown began at T - 390 minutes. At 6:06 in the morning, on February 20, Glenn boarded the spacecraft. There were a few minor delays to make last minute adjustments, but then the countdown continued. Finally they were down to the last few seconds before lift-off. Five, four, three, two, one -- Glenn was blasted into orbit. His successful flight orbited the earth three times. It reached a maximum altitude of 162 miles, and a maximum speed of 17,500 miles per hour. When it was time to re-enter the earth's atmosphere, the astronauts had a scare. They thought that the heat shield was coming loose. Glenn saw chunks of material that might be part of the heat shield flying by the window of the capsule. In the final minutes of the flight, everyone was nervously waiting to see if he would be able to return home safely. They were all relieved to see the Mercury 6 capsule splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. After four hours and 55 minutes in space, John Glenn was home. Seventeen minutes after splashdown, the capsule was picked up by a US destroyer. After it was brought aboard ship, Glenn stepped out. He had returned safely!

John Glenn was a hero. His career had taken him into earth orbit and back. However, Glenn didn't stop there. His popularity as a space hero helped him get elected to the US Senate. There the story of John Glenn began a new chapter.

 

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) John Glenn was ___.

         a) an astronauts

         b) a senator

         c) a fighter pilot

         d) all of the above        

         2) John Glenn was ___.

         a) the first man to walk in space

         b) the first American in space

         c) the first American to orbit the Earth

         d) the first man to orbit the Earth

         3) In the second paragraph, the world  “mission” means:

         a) a space flight

         b) a secret assignment

         c) a homework assignment

         d) a combat plane flight

         4) In the fifth paragraph the word “mission” means:

         a) a space flight

         b) a secret assignment

         c) a homework assignment

         d) a combat plane flight

5) This article is mainly about ___.

         a) John Glenn’s work as a senator

         b) John Glenn’s life

         c) John Glenn’s career

         d) the Mercury space capsule

6) John Glenn’s career could be described as

         a) successful

         b) ambitious

         c) distinguished

         d) all of the above

7) Which happened first?

         a) Glenn orbited the Earth in Mercury 6

         b) Glenn became senator

         c) Glenn flew in Korean war

         d) Glenn flew in WWII

8) From this article you can infer that ___.

         a) Glenn didn’t really want to fly planes

         b) Glenn worked and studied hard

         c) Glenn was elected senator by only a few votes

         d) Glenn was born in 1950

 

Answer the questions:

1) When did John Glenn make his first step on his path to outer space?

2) What program prepared him to be a fighter pilot in World War II?

3) What field was Glenn interested in when he entered Test Pilot School?

4)What record did Glenn set as he flew across the continent from Los Angeles to New York?

5) What did NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, choose Glenn for in 1959?

6) Why would the mission, Mercury 6, be a history-making mission?

7) What objectives did Mercury mission have?

8) What was the Mercury 6 spacecraft, named Friendship 7, designed to?

9) What rocket would boost Mercury 6 into space?

10) Why were a few minor delays when the countdown began?

11) How many times did John Glenn’s successful flight orbit the earth? At what speed?

         12) Why did astronauts have a scare when it was time to re-enter the earth's atmosphere? Did astronauts return safely?

13) Did John Glenn stop his career after returning from space?

 

Text 12 D

 

Space Walkers

 

By Sharon Fabian

 

Many people can name the first American in space (Alan Shepard) or the first man to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong). Not as many people can name the astronauts who set records for space walking. So many astronauts have completed a spacewalk now that the records go to those with the largest number of space walks, or the most total space walk hours.

All together, there have been over 100 space walks, or EVA's as NASA calls them. EVA stands for extra-vehicular activity, and that is exactly what a space walk is. An astronaut goes outside of his spaceship. Nothing but a special rope, called a tether, keeps him from floating away in space. The tether, about 55 feet long, is attached at one end to the astronaut and at the other end to a slide wire on the outside of the spaceship. This allows the astronaut as much freedom of movement as possible.

Space walking may seem like a really exciting job, but one astronaut called space walkers the construction workers of outer space. When an astronaut goes outside of his spacecraft, it is usually to repair or to build something on the outside of the spaceship. Sometimes it is a new piece of scientific equipment; sometimes it is just routine maintenance. When going for a space walk, astronauts wear a stiff, pressurized suit that weighs about 250 pounds. Just moving around in this suit is hard, tiring work. The astronaut must stay focused on his job every minute, because he has to keep track of his tether, and the tethers holding each and every tool and piece of equipment, at all times. After all, he is about 150 miles above the earth, and moving at a speed that is measured in miles per second!

Despite the fact that he is zooming around in space, attached only by a tether, the astronaut does not feel the speed the same way that you do on a bike or riding in a convertible with the top down. That is because there is no air, and therefore no wind, in space.

One interesting fact about space walking is that it is not actually walking at all. Astronauts move by pulling themselves around hand over hand, not by moving their feet.

The first space walker was Alexei Leonov, a cosmonaut from the former Soviet Union. His space walk lasted for 20 minutes.

The first American astronauts to walk in space were Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, who were assigned an EVA to release some locks on a radiator that was part of the air conditioning system for the International Space Station. When they were ready to begin their space walk, Donald Pettit had trouble opening the hatch to get out of their spaceship. Bowersox helped him out; he knew just what to do, because he had had the same trouble with the door on his pickup truck.          Today, there are astronauts who have had the opportunity to take several space walks. Some are getting to be old pros at the job. Anatoly Solovyov holds the record at the moment, with 16 EVA's totaling 77 hours outside of his spaceship. Jerry Ross is in second place with nine EVA's totaling 58 hours, and Steven Smith is in third place with seven EVA's totaling 49 hours. Chris Hadfield was the first Canadian astronaut to perform a space walk in 2001. He was involved in the installation of the Canadarm2.

One interesting job that the space walkers worked on was installing a cargo railway on the outside of the International Space Station. Space walkers also performed maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, replacing equipment that had been worn down by its time in space, and making improvements to the giant telescope.

Space walkers may think of their job as being something like a handyman's, and not all space walkers become famous now, but they have about the most amazing working conditions of any worker anywhere. After all, what other workers have new challenges every day, and all of outer space for their work place?

 

Choose the correct answer:

1) Another world for EVA is ___.

         a) tether

         b) space station

         c) space walk

         d) astronauts

2) Americans who fly in space are called astronauts. In the former Soviet Union, they called ___.

         a)cosmonauts

         b) astronauts

         c) aviators

         d) space walkers

3) This article is mainly about ___.

         a)construction workers

         b) astronauts who go to outer space

         c) Soviet cosmonauts

         d) astronauts who repaired the space telescope

4) The most space walk by one astronaut, so far, is ___.

         a) nine

         b) 16

         c) over 100

         d) one

5) Which happened last?

         a)Anatoly Solovyov set the record for the most EVA’s.

         b) Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox walked in space.

         c) Alexei Leonov walked in space.

         d) Alan Shepard flew into space.

6) Space walkers were called construction workers of outer space because ___.

         a) they work only in a good weather

         b) most of them are former construction workers

         c) they do building and maintenance work on the outside of space

         d) they are not really scientists

7) A tether is ___.

         a) a pressurized space suit

         b) a line that attached an astronaut to the outside of his spaceship

         c) a pair of special boots for walking in space

         d) an electric cord that provides the power for a spacecraft

8) Walking in space is ___.

a)     Challenging

b)    tiring

c)     an adventure

d)    all of the above

 

Listening

“Alan Shepard, 1923-1998: The First American to Travel into Space”

We are going to listen to the text about astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly in space. Listen and complete the gaps:

1) Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. He was in a small spacecraft called ___.

         2) In nineteen fifty-seven, the Soviet Union launched the first electronic satellite, ___.

         3) On April twelfth, nineteen sixty-one, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew in space for ___ minutes.

         4) In nineteen forty-seven, Alan Shepard became a ___ in the Navy. 

         5) Congress passed a bill creating ___-- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

         6) On April seventh, nineteen fifty-nine, the space agency announced the seven ___ astronauts.

         7) Nine months after the project started, NASA made its first test flight of the Mercury spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, ___. 

         8) The choice of Alan Shepard to be the first American to fly in space was announced just a few days before the ___.

         9) Three weeks later, President John F. Kennedy declared a new goal for the United States. He called for "landing a man on the ___ and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the nineteen sixties.

10) ___ American astronauts walked on the moon between nineteen sixty-nine and nineteen seventy-two.

 

Quiz: Astronaut

Astronauts have a reputation for being the brave and skilled few willing to risk their lives by strapping themselves aboard a rocket and blasting into outer space. But before they can don the orange jumpsuits and go into orbit, they must endure an intense selection and training process. How did guys like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn make it into space? And how have NASA requirements for astronauts changed in the last 50 years?

1) Which of the following terms did NASA originally want to use in reference to astronauts?

a)     Mercury

b)    Venus

c)     Aeronaut

2) Soviet astronauts were called:

a)     taikonauts

b)    aeronauts

c)     cosmonauts

3) On NASA's first list of qualifications for astronaut candidates for the Mercury program, each man had to be under:

a)     6 feet, 3 inches tall

b)    5 feet, 11 inches tall

c)     5 feet, 7 inches tall

4) Which of the following "Original Seven" astronauts was the only one from the U.S. Marines?

a)     Alan Shepard

b)    Gus Grissom

c)     John Glenn

5) The two types of astronauts in NASA today are:

a)     engineering astronauts and biology astronauts

b)    pilot astronauts and mission specialist astronauts

c)     human astronauts and animal astronauts

6) Which of the following agencies does not have an agreement with NASA to provide international astronauts?

a)     European Space Agency

b)    Brazilian Space Agency

c)     Chinese Space Agency

7) What former U.S. president is NASA's Houston space center named for?

a)     Lyndon B. Johnson

b)    John F. Kennedy

c)     Dwight D. Eisenhower

8) How long are astronaut candidates required to tread water continuously while wearing a flight suit?

a)     5 minutes

b)    10 minutes

c)     20 minutes

9) Who was the first woman in space?

a)     Sally Ride

b)    Valentina Tereshkova

c)     Jerrie Cobb

10) An official countdown for a shuttle launch begins at:

a)     T minus 43 hours

b)    T minus 24 hours

c)     T minus 8 hours

 

  

Answer Keys:

Unit 1

 

What is Astronomy

 

Match the words and definitions:

1 H

2 J

3 A

4 I

5 B

6 C

7 D

8 G

9 E

10 F

Text 1A

Pioneers of Astronomy

1 Isaac Newton

2 Edwin Hubble

3 Nicolaus Copernicus

4 Albert Einstein

5 Johannes Kepler

6 Stephen Hawking

7 Tycho Brahe

Text 1B

Branches of Astronomy

1 Planetary astronomy

2 Radio astronomy

3 Galactic astronomy

4 Stellar astronomy

5 Cosmology

6 Extragalactic astronomy

7 Solar astronomy

8 Astrophysics

 

Listening

What is Astronomy?

1objects

2 gateway

3 stars

4 temperature

5 surface

6 chemistry

7 made of

8 planetary

9 universe

10 astronomy    

 

Unit 2

 

Galaxies and Stars

 

Listening

How did the Milky Way get its name?

1 100

2 100,000

3 island

4 dark matter

5 black hole

6 25,000

7 spiral arms

8 milk

9 repot

 

Stars:
Cloze Activity

Stars can live for billions of years. A star is born when an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas collapses until it is hot enough to burn nuclear fuel (producing tremendous amounts heat and radiation). As the nuclear fuel runs out (in about 5 billion years), the star expands while the core contracts; it becomes a giant star that eventually explodes and turns into a dim, cool object (a black dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, depending on its initial mass). The largest stars have the shortest life span (still billions of years); more massive stars burn hotter and faster than their smaller counterparts (like the Sun).

Stars are giant nuclear reactors. In the center of stars, atoms are taken apart by tremendous atomic collisions that alter the atomic structure and release an enormous amount of energy. This makes stars hot and bright. In most stars, the primary reaction converts hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, releasing an enormous amount of energy.

In the universe, most stars occur in groups of at least two stars. Two stars that are locked in an elliptical orbit around their center of mass (their barycenter) are called a binary star system. About half of all stars are in a binary star system.

There are larger groups of stars, called clusters, that are relatively unorganized collections of stars. Huge, organized collections of stars are called galaxies. Our Solar System is located in the Milky Way Galaxy, a spiral galaxy. All groups of stars are held together by gravitational forces.

 

Unit 3

 

Solar System

 

Cloze Activity:

asteroid gaseous Mercury rock Sun	ecliptic moons planets Jupiter Mars	Earth center inner Solar System Pluto

Our Solar System consists of the sun, eight planets and a dwarf planet (and their moons), an asteroid belt, and many comets and meteors. The Sun is the center of our Solar System. The planets, their moons, the asteroids, comets, meteoroids and other rocks and gas all orbit the Sun.

The planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the Sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter (the biggest planet in our Solar System), Saturn (with large, orbiting rings), Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet). A belt of asteroids (many minor planets made of rock and metal) orbits between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the Sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, called the ecliptic (Pluto is an exception to this; it has an elliptical orbit that is tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).

The inner planets (those planets that orbit close to the Sun) are quite different from the outer planets (those planets that orbit far from the Sun). The inner planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are relatively small, composed mostly of rock, and have few or no moons. The outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet). They are mostly huge, mostly gaseous, ringed, and have many moons (again, the exception is Pluto which is small, rocky, dwarf planet with one large moon and two tiny moons).

Start thinking!

1 Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun.

2 Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun. This gas giant is the largest planet.

3 Pluto is a dwarf planet that is usually the farthest planet from the Sun. It is smaller than the 8 planets.

4 Mars is a red planet and the fourth planet from the Sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Listening

“Why Do the Planets Orbit the Sun?”

1 A planet orbits the Sun just as the moon or a satellite orbits Earth. Isaac Newton, one of the most brilliant scientists of all time, provided the first good explanation of orbits. Newton realized that the reason the planets orbit the Sun is related to why objects fall to Earth when we drop them. The Sun's gravity pulls on the planets, just as we now understand Earth's gravity pulls down anything that isn't held up by some other force. More massive objects produce a bigger gravitational pull than less massive ones, so as the heavyweight in our solar system; the Sun exerts the strongest gravitational pull.

2 Well, in addition to falling toward the Sun, the planets are moving sideways, around the Sun. This is the same as if you have a weight on the end of a string and swing it around. You are constantly pulling it toward you, but the motion sideways keeps it swinging around. Like the string, the Sun’s gravity pulls on the planets, but the planets have enough sideways motion to keep them in their orbits.

3 Yes, it is. The rocket has to do much more than boost the spacecraft above the atmosphere—it also has to provide enough speed for the spacecraft to keep swinging around Earth and not just fall back to the surface. Now if we give the spacecraft a really big boost, it can travel fast enough to leave Earth orbit and enter its own orbit around the Sun, eventually meeting up with its target elsewhere in the solar system.

4 If the spacecraft is headed, say, to Saturn, in some cases we can get it there faster if we fly it close enough to Jupiter, with its tremendous gravity, to take a little of the planet’s orbital energy and fling the spacecraft even faster. If the spacecraft is going fast enough past a planet it won’t get captured into orbit, but the planet’s gravity will bend the spacecraft’s path and make it go faster, helping propel it along its way through the solar system.

5 Well, not really. As a rule, spacecraft get a big initial boost from a rocket and then coast to their destinations. Most spacecraft can carry only enough fuel to fire their engines for a few minutes to make course changes or slow down just enough to be captured into orbit around another planet. We do have a different kind of propulsion system, though, that outperforms conventional systems It’s known as ion propulsion, which many science fiction fans have heard of. This engine is so efficient that it can thrust for years instead of minutes, which means its speed gradually increases until the spacecraft is going extremely fast indeed. NASA’s New Millennium Program tested ion propulsion on the Deep Space 1 mission a few years ago and it worked fantastically. In 2007 we will use it on the Dawn mission to the asteroid belt, and I’m sure other exciting missions of the future will use it as well.

 

Unit 4

 

Constellations

 

Answer the questions:

1 c

2 88

3 Because the universe has expanded since then.

4 Complete each sentence below.

The ancient Greeks thought the Big Dipper looked like a big bear.

Long ago, people of Britain thought the Big Dipper looked like a plough or plow.

Ancient Irish and French people thought the big dipper looked like a chariot.

 

Listening

“It's a Zoo Up There in Space. Make That a Galaxy Zoo”

1 Mars Rovers

2 dwarf planets

3 Jupiter

4 Eris

5 water ice

6 solid

7 Vesta

8 spacecraft

9 system

10 colors

11 universe

12 one hundred thirty

13 moonlight

14 colorful

15 Sky

16 Galaxy Zoo

17 change over time

 

Unit 5

 

Planets and the Sun

 

Listening

“A Direct Look at Five Planets Far From Our Solar System”

1 stars

2 three hundred twenty

3 in front of

4 Eight Seven Nine

5 optics

6 way

7 eighteenth

8 sixty-three

9 six hundred to seven hundred

 

Unit 6

 

Asteroids and Comets

 

Cloze Activity

Asteroids are rocky or metallic objects, most of which orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter. A few asteroids approach the Sun more closely. Asteroids are also known as planetoids or minor planets. The first asteroid discovered (and the biggest) is named Ceres; it was discovered in 1801.

About 3,000 asteroids have been cataloged. Asteroids range in size from tiny pebbles to about 578 miles (930 kilometers) in diameter (Ceres). There are about 40,000 known asteroids that are over about 0.5 miles (1 km) in diameter in the asteroid belt. Sixteen of the 3,000 known asteroids are over 150 miles (240 km) in diameter. There are many smaller asteroids. Some large asteroids even have orbiting moons. None of the asteroids have atmospheres.

The asteroid belt is a doughnut-shaped concentration of asteroids that orbit the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, closer to the orbit of Mars. Most asteroids orbit from between 186 million to 370 million miles (300 million to 600 million km or 2 to 4 AU) from the Sun. The asteroids in the asteroid belt have a slightly elliptical orbit. The time for one revolution around the Sun varies from about three to six Earth years. The strong gravitational force of the planet Jupiter shepherds (guides) the asteroid belt, pulling the asteroids away from the Sun, keeping them from falling into the inner planets.

The asteroid belt is not smooth; there are concentric gaps in it (known as Kirkwood gaps). These gaps are orbits where the gravitational forces from Jupiter do not let asteroids orbit (if there were asteroids there, they would be pulled towards Jupiter). The Kirkwood gaps are named for Daniel Kirkwood who discovered them in 1866.

The asteroid belt may be material that never coalesced into a planet, perhaps because its mass was too small; the total mass of all the asteroids is only a small fraction of that of the Earth's Moon. A less satisfactory explanation of the origin of the asteroid belt is that it may have once been a planet that was fragmented by a collision with a huge comet.

 

Comets

 

Comets

Cloze Activity

A comet is a small, icy celestial body that orbits the Sun. Comets are made up of a nucleus (it is solid ice, gas and dust), a gaseous coma that surrounds the nucleus (it is made of water vapor, CO₂, and other gases) and a long tail (made of dust and ionized gases). The long tail of gas and dust always points away from the Sun, because of the force of the solar wind (a continuous stream of electrically charged particles - ions- that are given off by the Sun). A comet's tail can be up to 250 million km long, and is most of what we see of the comet. Some well-known comets are Halley's, Shoemaker-Levy 9, Hale Bopp, and Swift-Tuttle.

Comets orbit the Sun in highly elliptical orbits. Their velocity increases greatly when they are near the Sun and slows down at the far reaches of the orbit. Comets are light only when they are near the Sun (when the gas is vaporizing); comets are dark (virtually invisible) throughout most of their orbit. We can only see comets when they're near the Sun. Some comets crash into the Sun or get so close that they burn up; these comets are called sun grazers.

The Earth passes through the orbit of some comets. When this happens, the left-over comet debris (rocks, etc.) bombards the Earth, and the debris burns up in our atmosphere. This is called a meteor shower; in it, many meteors fall through the atmosphere in a relatively short time.

Listening

What powers a comet?

1 tais

2 comets

3 planets

4 coma

5 the Sun

6 tail

7 spacecraft

8 pictures

 

Complete the diagram:

Comets and Asteroids Venn Diagram - Answers

 

 

 

  

Quiz: Space and the Universe

1 asteroids

2 Mars and Jupiter

3 energy

4 Venus and Mercury

5 98 percent

6 hunter

7 238,866 miles

8 Pluto

9 Jupiter

10 Clyde Tombaugh

 

Unit 7

 

The atmosphere

 

Match the words with the definitions:

1) l

2) q

3) t

4) h

5) s

6) a

7) r

8) n

9) g

10) b

11) o

12) c

13) p

14) m

15) d

16) k

17) f

18) i

19) g

20) e

 

True or False?T F

1 Without the ozone layer dangerous sunlight would reach the earth’s surface. T

2 77 % of the earth’s atmosphere is made up of oxygen. F

3 The weight of the atmosphere is the same everywhere. F

4 Methane rises into the atmosphere from plants and animals. T

5 The atmosphere is kept near the earth because of gravity. T

6 The troposphere is bigger near the poles. F

7 In the troposphere winds get stronger when you move higher up. T

8 Temperatures go down in all parts of the atmosphere . F

9 The stratosphere extends to about 80 km above the earth’s surface F

10 CFCs come from the sun and endanger our atmosphere F

11Fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide. T

12 Acid rain has poisonous gases like sulphur and nitrogen in it. T

13 When a volcano erupts sunlight can be blocked out for many years. T

14 Rockets can only travel up to the stratosphere. F

15 In higher parts of the atmosphere you can find helium and hydrogen. T

16 All of the gases in the atmosphere are produced by people. F

 

Match a part from A, B and C to form complete sentences:

The atmosphere filters sunlight and keeps dangerous rays from reaching our planet.

Without an atmosphere it would not be possible to live on earth.

Carbon dioxide is present in small amounts but it is very important.

Air is heaviest at sea level because the molecules are pressed together.

The troposphere is a part of the atmosphere that we know best.

At the top of the troposphere winds reach speeds of 300 km an hour.

In the mesosphere the air becomes thinner and the temperatures drop.

In the exosphere molecules are very far from each other.

In the past centuries people have caused great changes in the atmosphere.

 

Unit 8

 

Text 8B

 

Hubble

1) A

2) C

3) E

4) A

5) B

6) C

7) C

 

Quiz: The Hubble Space Telescope

1 It is not affected by earth's atmosphere or weather

The Hubble Space Telescope does require a focusing system and a power supply, and it is expensive to build and maintain. Its biggest advantage over land-based telescopes is that it can operate around the clock, unimpaired by poor visibility on earth. In addition, the Hubble can receive infrared and ultraviolet radiation from outer space, unhindered by earth's atmosphere.

2 the speed that a galaxy moves away from us (on earth) is proportional to its distance from us

Named after astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, the Hubble's Law is the value of the velocity of a galaxy receding from earth, compared to its distance away from earth. This is related to the concept of an expanding universe. The Hubble Space Telescope allowed scientists to find an accurate value for Hubble's Law, which in turn allowed scientists to make more accurate estimates of distances in outer space.

3 an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases

The Hubble Space Telescope can actually measure the distance across the nebula, the shape of the nebula, and its distance from earth. For example, Hubble found that the Ring Nebula has the shape of a cylinder which is approximately one light- year in diameter (source: NASA publication).

4 the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph

The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph can analyze the wavelengths of light coming from various stars, which can give information on the chemical composition of the stars themselves. This instrument is used to study stars, quasars, black holes and other bodies in outer space, according to NASA publications.

5 all of these

Like other instruments on the Hubble, the Wide Field Camera 3 is designed to be as versatile as possible by using a wide range of the light spectrum. Infrared light, for example, is used to take images of very faint objects, which are thought to be some of the oldest objects in the universe. Some images may be taken in several different spectra to gather more information about the object.

6 To protect the instruments from lint and other contaminants

The instruments aboard the Hubble Space Telescope are very sensitive and can be damaged by lint, dust and other contaminants. Just like we try to keep a clean lens on our personal cameras, NASA needs to keep clean parts on its very sophisticated instruments like the Wide Field Camera or the Cosmic Origins Spectrometer (COS). Instead of keeping a neutral charge, the "bunny suits" are actually slightly conductive, in order to move electrostatic charge off the technicians and onto a ground collector. This is because electrostatic charge can damage the sensitive electronics on the Hubble's instruments.

7 Astronauts perform the repairs or upgrades

Repairs or upgrades to the complicated Hubble instruments are made by astronauts flying to the Hubble aboard NASA's space shuttles. The astronauts train for a long time on the ground with mock-up repairs so they can successfully complete the repairs in outer space. The fifth servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled for the fall of 2008, led by mission commander Scott Altman.

8 false

The Wide Field Camera has real optical lenses made of ground glass. These lenses have special corrections that together with internal mirrors compensate for imperfections in the primary mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope. It turned out that correcting the instrument's lenses was easier than replacing the main mirror, which was ground incorrectly.

9 All of these

This mirror is truly an engineering marvel! To save weight, engineers reduced the amount of glass in the mirror by 75% using an open, honeycomb design. Also, given the temperature changes in outer space, the mirror was designed to reduce both contraction and expansion with temperature. Finally, the magnesium fluoride overcoat allows the Hubble Space Telescope to reflect ultraviolet light as well as visible light. This is important because astronomers are interested in both ends of the light spectrum for Hubble images.

10 Goddard Space Flight Center

Although all of these centers have contributed to the Hubble mission, the primary facility involved in the Hubble Space Telescope is Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which is NASA's primary satellite facility. Goddard Space Flight Center has the world's largest clean room (for assembling sensitive equipment), communications centers for receiving satellite transmissions, and a visitors' center. Greenbelt, Maryland is also the home town of Funtrivia members Janetgool, milogrobani, and severnriver.

 

Listening

1 Edwin Hubble

1 nineteen twenties

2 1889

3 law

4 astronomy

5 nebulae

6 galaxy

7 outside

8 shape

9 blue

10 Hubble’s Law

11 500

2 Kepler Telescope

1 rocket

2 galaxy

3 water

4 ocean

5 Earth

6 Are we along?

  

Unit 9

 

Rockets

 

Answers:

1) A

2) A

3) B

4) E

Space Shuttle

1 Rudder	a) part of the shuttle used for turning
2 Elevons	b) shuttle systems that are used as ailerons and rudders
3 Engine	c) the shuttle's system of locomotion
4 Manoeuvring engine	d) engine used to steer the shuttle
5 Main engines	e) engines that enable the shuttle to enter and leave space
6 Remote-control arm	f) system used to catch a satellite in need of repair
7 Star tracker	g) system of positioning by the stars
8 Wing	h) lift plane of the shuttle
9 Living quarters and flight deck	i) part of the shuttle where astronauts can work and pilot the shuttle without wearing spacesuits
10 Cargo-bay door	j) part of the shuttle that, when open, provides access to the payload
11 Forward control thrusters	k) system that alters or stabilizes the altitude of the shuttle
12 Orbital rendezvous light	l) light that announces a link-up if two space vehicle
13 Special launch	m) system used to start the shuttle in an emergency
14 Body flap	n) hinged movable shuttle panel
15 Tank	o) part of the shuttle containing stored fuel

 

Space Shuttle Flight Sequence

Stage	Definition
1 Pre-launch	a) part of the flight sequence of the space shuttle before launch
2 Launching	b) start of the ascent of the shuttle
3 Solid rocket boosters separate	c) separation of the external solid-rocket boosters
4 External tank separates	d) the external tank detaches from the orbiter
5 Orbit around the earth	e) repeated circling of the planet
6 Orbital operation	f) work to be done while the orbiter is in orbit
7 End of mission	g) all experiments have been completed
8 Leaving earth's orbit	h) the orbiter leaves orbit to return to earth
9 Landing	i) the orbiter sets down on earth
10 Space centre	j) place where missions are prepared
11 Rockets parachute into sea	k) the rocket, emptied of its propellants, falls in ocean before being recovered

 

Space Shuttle Quiz

1 A typical shuttle mission lasts seven to eight days from launch to landing, though they've been known to last up to two weeks, depending on the mission's objectives.

2 The solid rocket boosters (SRBs) provide about 71 percent of the main force necessary to lift a shuttle into space. The remaining 29 percent of the thrust is supplied by the orbiter's three main engines.

3 The external fuel tank of the shuttle's main engines is mostly filled with liquid hydrogen. While the engines burn both liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, these substances are stored in a 6:1 ratio in favor of liquid hydrogen. The engines draw enough liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to empty a family swimming pool every 10 seconds.

4 The polyisocyanurate foam insulation that covers the external fuel tank is crucial to the shuttle's liftoff. However, it doesn't play a role in stabilizing the tank after ignition. Its three primary purposes are to keep the fuel cold, protect the fuel from heat that builds up on the exterior of the fuel tank in flight, and minimize ice formation.

5 If all goes well, the shuttle's main engines will shut down at T plus 8.5 minutes of the launch. About 30 seconds later, the fuel tank will separate from the orbiter, burning when it re-enters the atmosphere. The shuttle engines are at maximum throttle several minutes earlier in the course of a launch, usually at about T plus 60 seconds.

6 The main engines are housed in the orbiter's aft fuselage. The forward fuselage contains support equipment for the crew, while the RCS module stores forward rocket jets for steering the orbiter.

7 Communication between Mission Control in Houston and the shuttle orbiter is a three-step process. Basically, Mission Control will send signals to a 60-foot radio antenna at a test facility in New Mexico. This antenna will relay the signals to a pair of Tracking and Data Relay satellites in orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth. The satellites will relay the signals to the space shuttle. The system also works in reverse; when the orbiter contacts Mission Control, the signal goes from the satellites to the test facility to Houston.

8 NASA uses 107 infrared, high speed digital video, HDTV, 35-mm and 16-mm cameras around the launch pad to detect possible damage to the shuttle that occurs after liftoff. Ten sites within 40 miles of liftoff are also equipped with cameras to detect possible damage, and there are also cameras on the external fuel tank, on the solid rockets boosters, and in the orbiter itself.

9 It was President Richard M. Nixon who announced that NASA would develop a reusable space shuttle or space transportation system (STS) in 1972. The shuttle would consist of an orbiter attached to solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank, and the prime contract was awarded to Rockwell International.

10 After testing the shuttle's components for nearly a decade, four shuttles -- Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis and Challenger -- were built. The Columbia was the first into orbit in 1981. It was a successful mission and paved the way for several more successful missions before the Challenger disaster in the 1986.

 

Unit 10

 

NASA

 

Listening

“America's Space Agency Turns 50”

1) O

2) S

3) L

4) T

5) A

6) R

7) B

8) Q

9) N

10) P

11) C

12) M

13) G

14) K

15) J

16) E

17) I

18) D

19) F

20) H

Quiz: NASA Turns Fifty

1) Pioneer

The Pioneer rocket attempted three failed lunar missions before being diverted for use in other missions, including mapping the interplanetary magnetic field, monitoring solar flares, flying by Jupiter and Saturn and returning information that would be crucial in the later design of the Voyager probe.

2) U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency

Explorer 1 became the first U.S. satellite when it was successfully launched on January 31, 1958. It operated until May of that year, and orbited Earth until 1970. The U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency oversaw the project, utilizing a rocket designed by Dr. Wernher von Braun and a data device designed by The Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Cal Tech. The result of Explorer I was that Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa initiated the discovery of what would later become known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts.

3) ten to eleven months

Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975 and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. Viking 2 was launched September 9, 1975 and entered Mars orbit on August 7, 1976. The Viking mission resulted in many images of Mars' surface, analyses of surface samples, and atmospheric, meteorological and seismologic data. Viking I communicated to Earth for 7 years, Viking II for five.

4) twenty four weeks

Launched in 1973, the purpose of Skylab was to explore working conditions for humans in prolonged weightlessness. Three separate crews manned Skylab for 28, 59 and 84 days in succession during its brief utility. Skylab was only manned for a span of eight months. One of the greatest contributions of Skylab was as a solar observatory.

5) Jupiter

The Galileo spacecraft traveled through the solar system for fourteen years, sending back new, fascinating information about asteroids (Gaspra and Ida and its moon Dactyl); comets (Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter); and Jupiter (rings, moons and atmosphere).

6) 6

Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 made safe lunar landings to make observations of soil, seismic activity, topography and solar wind. Apollo 13 held the world spellbound as desperate engineers scrambled to bring the crew safely home after the explosion of an oxygen canister.

7) Young

While John Young was an astronaut for NASA from 1962, he was not selected for the Mercury program along with Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. Young would go on to be the first Space Shuttle Commander for STS-1 aboard the SS Columbia. Young was an Apollo astronaut, flying in Apollo 10 around the moon, and walking on the moon from Apollo 16.

8) Gemini

After U.S. President Kennedy announced his intention to put a man on the moon "before the end of the decade", it was no longer enough to have put a man in orbit around the earth. NASA needed to hastily find answers to problems of prolonged space travel such as increased flight duration, vehicle maneuvering, reentry methods, the effect of prolonged weightlessness and psychological data. Gemini, the twin was a reference to having two astronauts in a very close space aboard the launch vehicle.

9) all are correct

Due to cold weather, failure in the O-ring of the right SRB (slid rocket booster) caused an explosion seventy three seconds into the flight that cost the lives of all seven astronauts aboard, including Christa McAulliffe, the first teacher in space. The Spartan satellite was a free flying satellite that carried out remote astronomical experiments before retrieval, and had been deployed on previous flights. The flight payload also included the CHAMP (Comet Halley Active Monitoring Program).

10) Lake Baikal

When Commander Hoot Gibson docked Atlantis with MIR for re-supply and personnel transfer, the two vehicles, together with the Soyuz capsule already attached had the distinction of being the largest ever spacecraft ever in orbit. The delicate approach brought the massive vehicles together at a rate of one inch per minute! When the connection was made, they were 216 nautical miles above 53.5° N 108.2° E (Russia's Lake Baikal), and off by less than 1" and half a degree!

 

Unit 11 

 

Listening

“The Evolution of Spacesuits”

1 protection

2 Ultraviolet radiation

3 seventeen

4 nineteen-thousand

5 pilot

6 nineteen-sixties

7 arms or legs

8 several

9 one hand

10 ninety

11 cool

12 communications

13 legs

14 fails

15 control module

16 lighter

17 controlled

 

Unit 12

 

People and Space

 

Listening

“Alan Shepard, 1923-1998: The First American to Travel into Space”

1 Freedom Seven

2 Sputnik One

3 one hundred eight

4 pilot

5 NASA

6 Mercury

7 Florida

8 launch

9 Moon

10 Twelve

Quiz: Astronaut

1 The term astronaut was not, in fact, NASA's first choice to refer to men aboard U.S. spacecraft. Program officials preferred Mercury, the messenger of the Roman gods, but the name had already been adopted for the first American manned spaceflight program. They eventually settled on astronaut, which means "sailor among the stars."

2 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev wanted a name that was inspirational and descriptive, and the Russians eventually chose the term cosmonaut to refer to their space travelers. Cosmonaut means "sailor of the universe."

3 In addition to being under 5 feet, 11 inches tall, astronaut candidates also had to be in a branch of the military, be under the age of 40, hold a bachelor's degree or equivalent in engineering, be a graduate of a test pilot school, and have at least 1,500 hours of flying time logged.

4 Of the seven men chosen for the Mercury project, only John Glenn came from the U.S. Marines. The other six were divided between the Navy and Air Force, respectively.

5 Today's NASA astronauts are known as either pilots or mission specialists. Pilots command and pilot shuttles while mission specialists work with pilots to maintain spacecraft and equipment and conduct experiments.

6 International astronauts come from four agencies that have an agreement with NASA: the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

7 When NASA's Houston, Texas facility opened in 1961, it was deemed the Manned Spacecraft Center. The name was changed in 1973 to honor former president and Texas native Lyndon B. Johnson, who died that January.

8 In addition to swimming three lengths of a 25-meter pool without stopping, and swimming three lengths of the pool in a flight suit and tennis shoes with no time limit, astronaut candidates at the Johnson Space center must also tread water continuously for 10 minutes while wearing a flight suit as part of their basic training. Basic training lasts two years.

9 The first woman in space was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. She flew aboard Vostok 6, which launched on June 14, 1964. Jerrie Cobb was a First Lady Astronaut Trainee with the Mercury program, and Sally Ride was an American woman astronaut who first traveled in space in 1983.

10 The official countdown for a shuttle launch begins at the Kennedy Space Center at T-43 hours, three days before liftoff. The extra time is built in to ensure all launch preparations can be completed.

  

Literature

 

1.  Муртазов А.К.. Англо-русский астрономический словарь. Pязань, Pязанский государственный университет имени С.А. Есенина, 2010.

2. Joanna Turnbull, Diana Lea, Dilys Parkinson “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English.” Oxford University Press, 2011

3.  http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/

4.  http://www.sciencemaster.com/space/space.php

5.  www.nasa.gov/

6.  www.astrogorizont.com/Сохраненная копия  - Похожие 

 

Содержание 

Предисловие	3
Unit 1. What is Astronomy	4
Unit 2. Galaxies and Stars	9
Unit 3. Solar System	16
Unit 4. Constellations	23
Unit 5. Planets and the Sun	30
Unit 6. Asteroids and Comets	38
Unit 7. The atmosphere	48
Unit 8. Telescopes	53
Unit 9. Space vehicles	65
Unit 10. NASA	75
Unit 11. Technologies in Space	82
Unit 12. People and Space	92
Answer Keys	104