Hello & welcome to this weekend’s GK Nugget. This time
I’m writing about a subject that has fueled the fantasy of mankind for
generations. I’m talking about space travel.
April 12th marks 56 years since Russian
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space (1961). He traveled
aboard the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 1 to an altitude of 187 miles (301
kilometers) above the earth & completed a single orbit in a flight lasting
108 minutes.
Many believe this was one of the defining moments in
space history, not just based on the magnitude of the event but also because it
intensified the already ongoing Space Race between the Russians &
Americans. 23 days later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
Eventually on 20th July 1969, the space flight
Apollo 11 carried the first humans to set foot on the Moon. American astronaut
Neil Armstrong made his place in history by uttering the famous words "That's
one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" as he stepped onto
the lunar surface.
But before all of this, the Soviet Union launched the
first satellite into space on October 4, 1957 called the Sputnik. It is often
considered to be the first victory of the infamous Space Race between the
United States & the U.S.S.R.
Voyager 1 is the first ever man-made object to enter interstellar
space. It was launched on 5th September 1977, with a mission to do a deep study
of the solar system. It holds the record of operating for over 39 years (&
counting) & still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive
routine commands & return data. At a distance of 138 AU (2.06×1010
km) from the Sun as of March 2017, it is the farthest spacecraft from Earth as
well as the farthest man-made object. Its mission is expected to continue until
around 2025, when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer
supply enough electric power to operate any of its scientific instruments.
The Hubble space telescope became the first observatory
to be placed in space after launching in 1990. Its operation has helped us achieve
some of our greatest understandings of the universe. It marked the biggest
advancement in astronomy since Galileo invented the telescope in the 1600s, &
has brought us hundreds of beautiful pictures of galaxies & stars far, far
away.
The first pieces of the International Space Station (an
artificial habitable satellite situated in lower Earth orbit) were launched in
1998 & it has been a huge part of American & Russian space missions.
Since 2001, there has been a crew of two or six aboard the space station at all
times. It's the largest artificial body in orbit, & can be seen by the
naked eye from Earth when viewed at the right time. The International Space Station
is managed & used by five different space agencies NASA (America), CSA
(Canada), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan) & ESA (European Space Agency,
whose 11 members are Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands,
Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland & the United Kingdom).
The Mars exploration rovers were launched in 2003 with
the goal of allowing us to better understand the history of water on Mars.
Spirit, the first of the Mars rovers, made its last communication in 2010,
while Curiosity, which landed in 2012, is currently still in communication with
NASA.
SpaceShipOne is the first ever manned private flight that
launched at first in the year 2004. It used to fly at a boundary of 1,00,000
meters. In 2004 this space flight won the Ansari X prize worth $10 million.
In the competition SpaceShipOne flew in the suborbital
plane with three passengers.
The Space Race has moved from being a race for political one-upmanship
to a race of exploration & wanderlust. Google announced the Lunar X Prize in
the year 2007. The mission is a challenge that calls for participating teams to
design & land a robot on the Moon. The Robot is required to travel more
than 500 meters on the lunar surface & send feedback to earth. The deadline
of the competition is December 31, 2017 & 30 teams from 17 countries are competing
to win the US$20 million grand prize. Team Indus, headquartered out of
Bangalore is the only Indian team in this mission & a front runner in this
challenge.
Talking about space travel, large companies are working
to develop reusable rockets that will carry human tourists to space in the near
future. The reusable rockets will help drastically reduce the cost of space
travel. Notable among these are Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon
Musk’s Space X & Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
Closer home, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
on February 15, 2017 successfully launched a record number of 104 satellites
under a single mission from the spaceport in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. With
the launch of over 100 satellites, India has now broken the record of Russia,
which previously accomplished the feat of launching record number of satellites
at 37, followed by the US space agency NASA, which has launched 29 in one go.
That’s all on this edition of the GK Nugget. Hope it’s
been an “out of this world” read for you.