A Brief History: Space Exploration

As often happens in science, the earliest practical work on rocket engines designed for spaceflight occurred simultaneously during the early 20th century in three countries by three key scientists: in Russia, by Konstantin Tsiolkovski; in the United States, by Robert Goddard; and in Germany, by Hermann Oberth. In the 1930s and 1940s Nazi Germany saw the possibilities of using long-distance rockets as weapons. Late in World War II, London was attacked by 200-mile-range V-2 missiles, which arched 60 miles high over the English Channel from Germany at more than 3,500 miles per hour. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union created their own missile programs. On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into space. Four years later on April 12, 1961, Russian Lt. Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth in Vostok 1. His flight lasted 108 minutes, and Gagarin reached an altitude of 327 kilometers (about 202 miles). The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, went into orbit on January 31, 1958. In 1961 Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space. On February 20, 1962, John Glenns historic flight made him the first American to orbit Earth. Landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth within a decade was a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. On July 20, 1969, Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a giant step for mankind as he stepped onto the moon. Six Apollo missions were made to explore the moon between 1969 and 1972. During the 1960s unmanned spacecraft photographed and probed the moon before astronauts ever landed. By the early 1970s orbiting communications and navigation satellites were in everyday use, and the Mariner spacecraft was orbiting and mapping the surface of Mars. By the end of the decade, the Voyager spacecraft had sent back detailed images of Jupiter and Saturn, their rings, and their moons. Skylab, Americas first space station, was a human-spaceflight highlight of the 1970s, as was the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, the worlds first internationally crewed (American and Russian) space mission.

In the 1980s satellite communications expanded to carry television programs, and people were able to pick up the satellite signals on their home dish antennas. Satellites discovered an ozone hole over Antarctica, pinpointed forest fires, and gave us photographs of the nuclear power-plant disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. Astronomical satellites found new stars and gave us a new view of the center of our galaxy. In April 1981 the launch of the space shuttle Columbia ushered in a period of reliance on the reusable shuttle for most civilian and military space missions. Twenty-four successful shuttle launches fulfilled many scientific and military requirements until January 1986, when the shuttle Challenger exploded after launch, killing its crew of seven. The Challenger tragedy led to a reevaluation of Americas space program. The new goal was to make certain a suitable launch system was available when satellites were scheduled to fly. Today this is accomplished by having more than one launch method and launch facility available and by designing satellite systems to be compatible with more than one launch system. The International Space Station is now in orbit and permanently crewed. With many different partners contributing to its design and construction, this highflying laboratory has become a symbol of cooperation in space exploration, with former competitors now working together. And while the space shuttle will likely continue to carry out important space missions, particularly supporting the International Space Station, the Columbia disaster in 2003 signaled the need to step up the development of its replacement. Future space launch systems will be designed to reduce costs and improve dependability, safety, and reliability. In the meantime most U.S. military and scientific satellites will be launched into orbit by a family of expendable launch vehicles designed for a variety of missions. Other nations have their own launch systems, and there is strong competition in the commercial launch market to develop the next generation of launch systems.

A brief history of the Earth

This week we celebrate Earth Day 2006. But today we are going to take a journey, a voyage starting way back before we were born, or even before humans first appeared on Earth. This journey starts at the original Earth Day, Earth Day 4.6 billion BC. Before this time, the solar system was just a massive cloud of gas mostly Hydrogen and Helium, but with some elements that we see around us every day - like metals - and some necessary for human life - like oxygen. This cloud started to condense, perhaps because the explosion of a nearby star in a supernova caused a shockwave that started the collapse. As gravity pulled all the molecules in the cloud closer and closer together, collisions between the molecules became more frequent, and so the cloud became hotter and hotter. In the centre of the cloud, it was so hot that the sun began to form. Further out from the centre, the gases started to cool down, and dust and ice started to freeze out into solids. These solids occasionally ran into each other, and stuck together. As the objects got bigger and bigger, more debris was able to stick to them. Eventually these objects got big enough that they started attracting each other through gravity these rocky objects are called planetesimals. One of these planetesimals, about 150 million kilometres from the sun, became the Earth. Another of these smashed into the Earth, tilting it on its side and perhaps creating the Earths tectonic plates. This one became the Moon. The infant Earth was very different from the Earth of today. There were no oceans, and most of the atmosphere was blown off by the solar wind from the infant sun. It was smashed by debris still around from the formation of the solar system, and was so hot that it was fully molten. Around Earth Day 4 billion BC, the Earth was in a period of heavy asteroidal bombardment. This caused steam to be released from the crust, and intense volcanic activity released more and more gases, giving rise to an atmosphere.

Asteroids also brought water to the Earth in the form of ice, which was quickly evaporated into water vapour. Now clouds could form. The Earth continued to cool, and eventually it rained. It rained so hard and so often that the oceans were formed on about Earth Day 3.8 billion BC. The Earths atmosphere at this stage probably contained mainly ammonia, methane, water vapour, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. There was very little oxygen, but this is when it is thought that life started to begin. Some scientists think that the energy from volcanoes, lightning and ultraviolet radiation as there was yet no ozone layer drove chemical reactions that produced complex molecules from simple abundant compounds such as methane and ammonia. All this continued for a very long time, until by chance there arose a new molecule, a molecule that had the ability to replicate itself. Eventually, and scientists are not yet sure how, DNA was formed. DNA is the replicator that is the basis of all known life, except for a couple of viruses.

It is thought that on Earth Day 6 million BC or if the history of the Earth was condensed into a single day, then at 2 minutes to midnight apes started to walk upright. Soon after, the first human-like species evolved, and on Earth Day 200,000 BC, or 2 seconds to midnight, Homo Sapiens arrived. 10 thousand years ago there were 5 million humans on Earth, now there are 6.5 billion. We are still learning about past human civilisations, and still uncovering artifacts from ancient Rome and China. The Earth has survived four major ice ages the first of which iced over the Earth completely. There have been five major extinction events and many smaller ones the biggest one, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, or the Great Dying of Earth Day 251 million BC, wiped out 90% of all marine species and 70% of all land vertebrates. One can only imagine whats in store for the Earth in the future..