Who : Avada
What : Planetary Missions
Spicy : Avada has a geeky post after a long time in her own words and we liked it. It is a post about the planetary missions which have been sent to the space from the earth. A very well researched post and a sure read.
Long time and no geeky post from my side! Let me start with one here.
Our ancestors observed the night sky and we had always wondered about moon. Now that we know there is nothing on moon, not even an atmosphere, we are kind of sure there is no life on moon. The next target for these days has been Mars, the only planet which “might” have life on it, other than Earth and we have seen lot of hype about the missions to mars like Mars Rover et al. And it is a confirmed news that humans are going to land on Mars in the beginning of the next decade.. Awesome, isn’t it? Let me dedicate this post to the Apollo 11 mission (when man first landed on moon), which completed 40 years of moon landing recently!!!
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, as Neil Armstrong rightfully said.
Everyone has heard about the moon and mars missions, but are you guys aware of other missions going on/older missions which gave fantastic information about other planets of our solar system?
Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? – By Carl Sagan, one of the greatest astronomers.
As everyone is aware of the space race between USSR and US, USSR sent Veneras to send probes to Venus. After some unsuccessful missions, Venera 4 onwards succeeded in doing some flybys around Venus, some of them sent probes and we got lot of information and realized that the Venus was a hot ball of SO2 gas. After this, US sent Pioneer Venus 1 and 2 to perform long-term observations of the Venusian atmosphere and surface features and also sent a probe to Venus, to perform some atmospheric experiments. After this, Magellan was sent by US which made a mapping of almost 98% of the Venus’ surface. That was the last expedition to Venus.
Jupiter and the other gas giants were still a mystery since people were kind of scared about hitting the asteriod belt that existed after Mars. Pioneer 10 and 11 sent by US, proved that it was possible to cross the belt and move ahead. Pioneer 10 studied only Jupiter and Pioneer 11 also made a visit to Saturn. Now they both are drifting away in space and have left solar system long back and are not in contact anymore. Hopefully, they will meet some aliens and they carry a plaque with some drawing so that the aliens can recognize who sent them.
Voyager is one mission by US that I am really excited about and I have been following this mission for a long time now. Voyager 1 and 2 helped us map out some of the areas where we never went. They were initially sent to investigate Jupiter and Saturn but they ended up exploring even Uranus, Neptune and their moons. They are now exploring regions where nothing from Earth has flown before. They are now at a point where the Sun’s dominance of the environment ends and the interstellar space begins. Is it not exciting? It will be so interesting to see what the interstellar space is like!
Galileo‘s 14-year odyssey helped us a lot in understanding Jupiter and its moons. We have yet another ongoing mission for Jupiter from NASA called Juno.
Coming to Saturn, I guess everyone has heard about the famous Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, which made some amazing discoveries about what the saturn’s rings are composed of. Huygens landed on Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn. Though, it completed its mission, it was made to stay back in order to witness the Saturnian equinox, which occured in August 2009 when the sun shone directly on the equator and began to illuminate the northern hemisphere and the rings’ northern face. A very interesting mission. We now, know that there are volcanoes on the moon Io, similar to those on Earth.
There is another mission called New Horizons sent by US which is all set to explore Pluto and its satellite Charon. Although the spacecraft has just crossed Saturn, lot of excitement is floating around about what it might find out.
The last but not the least planet, the one closest to the Sun, Mercury. Mariner series sent by US was the first to flyby Mercury and Venus. Now there is a new ongoing mission to explore Mercury, called Messenger, again by US. It has already done three flybys around Mercury and about 90% of its surface has been mapped.
Now that the planets and their satellites are done, the only things left in our Solar system are the asteroids and comets. We have even explored them. Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) by US again, was the first to land on an asteroid, Eros and did some useful exploration. Deep Impact by US was sent to explore the comet Tempel 1. It had an impactor which ejected a mass towards the comet and then recorded the impact effects. Similarly, Stardust from US did exploration of comet Wild 2. Glycine, a fundamental building block of life was found in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by Stardust which kind of proves the theory that Comets were responsible for the evolution of life on Earth. Currently, we have a Stardust NEXT mission going on and Dawn exploring Vesta and Ceres (prototype planets in the asteroid belt), EPOXI (comet Hartley 2), all of them by NASA.
As you can see, the only country constantly involved in the exploration of space is US. Initially, USSR did some breakthroughs too. But later on, it’s just US in the space race and some investment from European Space Agency like the Huygens probe and Italian space research. Japan sent some spacecrafts to explore comets, Mars and Moon, and China and India sent to Moon. It is very sad to see that the rest of the countries seem like they do not want to invest much for it. I wish that more and more countries would get into the space race and we make some astounding discoveries in future!!
Image sources: http://www.google.com
wow….lots of technical stuffs involved….I think you read an interesting article about space… And you completely reflected here….?? hmm..nice article…
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hehe..thanks.. these are the results of my constant reading of NASA website 😀 I keep reading about new missions 🙂 Thought I will make a short and sweet summary of the same..
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wat do u say for pple who still havent decided where they landed on the moon or not??.. its seriously hard to believe after seeing the conspiracy theory documentary that is against it.. no dry well.. i want a more brave death..
nice article btw.. n shall i suggest the topic for ur next geeky post.. parallel universes..
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hehe.. I somehow dont believe in that conspiracy theory..sorry.. thanks 🙂 Nice topic for the next geeky post..
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hopin tht atleast i wont be against ur views for ur next geeky post..;)
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hehe.. hopefully 😀
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after reading this post..i seriously got reminded of you.. this is the post..
http://www.chronicwriter.com/2009/09/362-water-in-moon.html
wat do u say now??
n at your own risk u can wish to see my comment for that very post..
WARNING: but after u see that comment am sure u cant refrain from a verbal fight..
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The post wants me to go back to my childhood and work on that science project for the school day ! Very nice.
@Vishnu,
Don’t ask Buzz Aldrin about the conspiracy theory. If you haven’t already search YouTube for Aldrin clocking a reporter 🙂
Madhu
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already seen that too.. we downloaded a set of conspiracy theories from torrents.. many things came along in tht..
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🙂 thanks Madhu for visiting my blog..
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Vishnu those conspiracy videos are just some photo/video editing done by some losers.. they cannot be true..
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the conspiracy theory tries to prove tht the photos shown as proof by NASA were taken somewhere on earth only..:P
lets end this discussion.. u believe they landed.. am still in a dilemma whether they landed or not..
waitin for ur next post:)
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hehehe.. yeah.. hopefully we will not contradict each other in the next post 🙂
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If only I cud go bk and study all these n go on a project like this 😛
Well compiled A 🙂
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yeah true wish I could go back too 😦 thanks swaram
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Hey avada!
U r studious eh?
Pucca article! Lots of informations!
Even i read about Mariner series recently in a journal! Their payloads are very different and were designed to tolerated the heat of sun!!
Great post avada!
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Thanks girlie.. hehe.. just have too much of interest in space missions.. 🙂
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Yes!
I too love things on these space things!!
Its so nice of you to write it as a article!!
Learnt alot!
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even you like space things.. that’s nice gal.. 🙂 thanks
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Great information. You are an amateur astronomer, eh?
If you are interested in space missions then check out this movie called “The Right Stuff”. Its an awesome movie about the “Mercury 7”, the initial group of 7 USAF testpilots who were chosen to go into space. This movie showcases how it all started.
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Wish I could be an astronomer.. sadly, I am not 😦 just an enthusiast of such space exploration missions.. I havent seen that movie.. let me watch it then.. thanks for visiting my blog 🙂
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I am also a science freak. Next time someone needs information I’ll direct them to your blog, a nice, well-structured, succinct summary. Enjoyed it! 🙂
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Yayyy.. glad to meet another freak like me girl 🙂 hehe.. thanks
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Wow,this is so informative and these interest me a lot.And to think that our life is just a matter of chance.A chance that this universe formed,,a chance that life decided to develope on this planet.I love thinking about it.
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Yeah such things interest me too a lottt…I like the life of an astronomer.. their life is sooo interesting unlike ours 😦
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Ah,you would love to be one wouldn’t you?I,on the other hand can live without first hand experiences(but I wouldn’t say no to one) and be satisfied reading and then later contemplating 😀
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yep I wud give anything to go on a mission 😀 but yeah it is just a dream!! and thanks sooo much for the award girl!!! 🙂 🙂 going to put it up on my site right now!!!
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Oh,btw I have an award for you on my blog. 🙂
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Hey I thought I’ll let you know, your post is picked again by BlogAdda!! Twice in a row!! :~))
This time it is BlogAdda’s Spicy Saturday Picks – Sep. 19, ‘09
Congratulations, girl!!! :~))
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Thanks soooo much girl.. I had failed to notice that.. thanks a lot for letting me know… just cant believe this!!!! 😮
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that was something encyclopedic…
got me into that chapter on Universe in some school class which I happened to read more than a couple of times..
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thanks 🙂 yeah I enjoyed reading such chapters while at school too and still love reading science books/articles.. it’s my favourite thing in this world!! 🙂
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Congratulations!!
Great going Avada!! 🙂
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Thanks shilps 🙂 🙂
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informative summary which doesn’t bog down the reader with lots of detail(as is characteristic of such literature)…very interesting read 🙂 waiting for the next one
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Thanks shru 🙂 🙂 thank you sooo much
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Hey, visit my blog http://rahulsharmaspeaks.blogspot.com/
there is something waiting for you 🙂
Hope you like it:)
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Nice post, and congrats to be listed on Blogadda for most spicy post.
you are turning to Star.
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hehehe..thanks yaar 🙂
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Informative & interesting . Have you read A brief history of time” by Stephen W. Hawking ? .If not try it has so much of interesting info. You might like it.
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Thanks Vani 🙂 Yeah have read Stephen Hawking’s books.. They are one of my favourites..
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Wow! What an informative post. one thing I feel US is doing a lot but it was the erstwhile USSR which had pioneered in space technology like sending a dog, man & woman first to space… unfortunately the country broke-up and lost its edge 😦
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Thanks Dhiman 🙂 Yeah USSR did such good research initially.. even they were the first to successfully send a probe to Venus
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I loved this post. I watch programmes on Discovery. But information about all space missions in one post! Wonderful!
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Thanks Pra 🙂 glad you liked it
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First of all congrats for getting picked by blog adda.. 🙂
this is a too good post AK.. I have always interested in space and I followed that Mars mission closely… but somehow I am not checking them often now..
you are keeping up your interest thats great…
As for funding.. I will tell you.. space exploration needs lot of bucks… with many not even having proper food… its better to spend money for them than looking for some alternate space to live…
its time to look after the Earth… and also I guess.. even US to look to cut down its expenses on researches as they too feeling the heat of recession now…
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Thanks Kanagu 🙂 Yeah space exploration needs lot of money but I feel we can spend atleast 5-10% of the tax money for such research.. because by doing this we are trying to understand how life evolved on Earth and how we humans evolved.. if we effectively utilise the tax money, India will not be poor but most of the money is lost in corruption
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Congratulations miss!
Brilliant post btw 🙂 I often used to dream about space , space-travel etc .. Your post brought back those memories !! 🙂
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Thanks girlieeee 🙂
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Nicew article.read latest news on human genome
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It’s really geeky.. If you are intrested in astronomy, check this archieve,
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
contains a lot of pics form US & various countries’ space research centres.
Dont miss Eagle Nebula & Hubble’s Ultra deep space!
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🙂 Thanks Prasad for reading this.. Thanks for the link..It had some beautiful pics 🙂
Have seen the Eagle Nebula and Hubble pics though. I have a book with pics taken by Hubble.They are simply amazing right?
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Yeah that Hubble telescope has a really long vision. It took intergalactic pics beyond our galaxy but it poorly failed in an attempt to take the picture of the Moon landing site! It indirecly says that Armstrong has landed on Neveda Desert!
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Hmm yeah but I dont believe in that theory that man did not land on moon.. Hubble pics rock though!! 🙂
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