Date: 12-13-00
EXPLORATIONS#1930 - Space Digest
By Paul ThompsonVOICE ONE:
This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS. Today, we tell about school children who are helping NASA gather important information about Jupiter. We tell about recent improvements on the International Space Station. And, we tell about what scientists are calling the most important discovery about the planet Mars.
VOICE ONE
NASA scientists say they have discovered extremely important evidence of lakes and seas on the planet Mars. They say the new evidence is the most important and exciting discovery ever made about Mars.
The cameras of NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft provided the new evidence. The spacecraft is orbiting Mars.
Michael Malin is the chief researcher for the Mars Orbiter Camera. Mr. Malin says the pictures clearly show a number of lines in the rock surface of the planet. He says these are the kind of lines that may have been formed by lakes or seas. He said scientists have never before had this kind of clear evidence that large amounts of water once existed on Mars. Mr. Malin says the evidence shows that early Mars may have been more like Earth than most scientists had thought. The lines are very similar to rock formations found on Earth. These lines are formed by different levels of sedimentary rock. On Earth, they are usually found where lakes or large areas of water had once been.
VOICE TWO:
Ken Edgett is a scientist working on the Mars Surveyor project. He says the new evidence is very important and could mean many different things.
Mr. Edgett says the pictures are clear evidence of early Martian history�perhaps as early as three-thousand-million years ago. He says the different levels of sedimentary rock preserve the surface history of our planet. He says this history includes the fossil record of life here on Earth. He says it is very possible similar formations on Mars also hold evidence of past fossil life on Mars.
VOICE ONE:
Mr. Malin says that in the past he never really believed that Mars was once very wet and warm in its early history. But he says his earlier view of Mars has been severely changed by the new pictures. He says the lines seen in the pictures would be almost impossible to create without water.
Mr. Malin says the new evidence has helped to solve one little piece of the mystery that is the planet Mars.
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VOICE TWO:
The International Space Station is now one of the brightest objects in the night sky. NASA officials said people can now look up and see this bright new star. Only the Moon and star Sirius will shine brighter.
The International Space Station became extremely bright after the NASA shuttlecraft Endeavor carried to the space station huge structures to gather energy from the sun.
The solar arrays are the largest and heaviest structures ever carried into space. The devices and the equipment needed to use them weigh seventeen tons. They are the first of four similar groups of huge solar arrays that will supply electrical power for the International Space Station.
The solar arrays are seventy-three meters long. They collect sunlight and change it into electric power. They carry sixty-four thousand power-creating instruments. They look like huge versions of wings that help birds fly.
The solar arrays both create and store power. They increased the space station's electric power supply by five times. As the space station grows, more solar arrays will be added to meet the need for increased electric power.
VOICE ONE:
Space shuttle astronauts Joe Tanner and Carlos Noriega connected the huge solar arrays to the International Space Station. Mr. Tanner and Mr. Noriega worked outside the shuttle to complete this task. They also completed other tasks that improved the space station.
One of the tasks was to prepare the space station for the next shuttle visit. That shuttle flight will carry the first science laboratory up to the space station. It is the Destiny Laboratory provided by the United States. Plans call for it to be put in place in January.
VOICE TWO:
The increase in electric power will permit the crew members on the space station to begin their first science experiments. These experiments include a student project that will study the affects of a lack of gravity on soybean and corn seeds. Another experiment will study control devices for future satellites. And the crew will begin studying changes to the Earth's environment.
The first crew members on the International Space Station arrived November First. They were launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The crew commander is American astronaut Bill Shepherd. The Soyuz commander is Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko. The flight engineer is Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. These three men will be on the space station for three months. They will return to Earth on the Space Shuttle Discovery in early February.
They will be replaced by the second crew of the space station, cosmonaut Yury Usachev and astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms. They will arrive on the space shuttle Discovery. The Soyuz spacecraft that brought the first crew will remain at the space station as an emergency escape vehicle.
VOICE ONE:
Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Gidzenko and Mr. Krikalev are the first of many crews that will live and work on the space station. Future crews will be a mix of astronauts from the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency and Japan.
They will move in and out of the space station during the coming years. These crews will become part of the first permanent colony of human civilization away from the planet Earth.
The International Space Station represents an effort by sixteen nations. The project will include six scientific laboratories and provide more space research than any spacecraft ever built. When it is completed, the living and working area for the crew will be about the size of the largest passenger aircraft.
More than one-hundred huge parts of the space station will be flown into space before it is completed. The parts will be carried up to the space station on at least forty space flights during the next five years.
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VOICE TWO:
Students from twenty-five schools in thirteen states are controlling huge radio telescopes in the California desert. They are using the telescopes to study natural interference caused by radiation near the planet Jupiter. The students will make their observations during the next several months.
They are measuring radio waves from Jupiter created by speeding electrons and protons that cannot be seen by the eye. The research helps students understand that light which can be seen is not the only way to study the universe.
Their work will aid NASA in studies of this radio wave interference. The studies of the radiation will permit NASA to improve communication plans for NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini will pass Jupiter on December Thirtieth and then continue on to the planet Saturn.
VOICE ONE:
Scott Bolton is a scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He says researchers have known that the radio wave interference near Jupiter changes over time. And he says NASA wants to know if the Cassini spacecraft is experiencing a normal day or an unusual day for radiation. The observations the students collect will be NASA's measure of what kind of radio interference to expect.
The students are using equipment that includes a radio telescope at the Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope. It is one of a group of thirty-four meter, dish-like radio telescopes. In the past, these huge devices were used by NASA to communicate with spacecraft.
VOICE TWO:
Cassini is an international project involving the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. Several European universities and major companies also are involved in the project.
Cassini carries the equipment needed to do twenty-seven scientific investigations of Saturn and its moons. The huge spacecraft weighs about five-thousand-three-hundred kilograms. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on October Fifteenth, Nineteen-Ninety-Seven. Plans call for it to arrive near Saturn on July First, Two-Thousand-Four.
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written and produced by Paul Thompson. This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Listen again next week for another EXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.
Source: www.voa.gov/special/