What’s Up in Space?
Sixty years ago this month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Since then, NASA has sent astronauts to the moon, to float outside spacecraft in outer space, and to live on the International Space Station (ISS). Its explorations of distant planets such as Mars and Saturn have given scientists worlds of new information to analyze. The Mini Page celebrates this anniversary with an issue about what NASA has in store in the coming months. InSight At 4:05 a.m. Pacific time on May 5, NASA’s InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) spacecraft launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. When InSight’s lander arrives on Mars in November, it will explore the “red planet” to find out more about its interior, or inside. Scientists have detected volcanoes on Mars, but they don’t know if the planet experiences Marsquakes. InSight will look for seismic, or shaking, activity. Aheat probe will move off the InSight lander and record temperatures. Other instruments will record wind and pressure and the properties, or qualities, of Mars’ crust, mantle and core. Radio science instruments will be able to measure Mars’ core by determining how the sun affects the planet’s orbit. The data from InSight’s mission will help scientists better understand how the other rocky planets in our solar system were first formed.
Parker Solar Probe
Later this month, NASA will launch the Parker Solar Probe, which will fly closer to the sun than any spacecraft ever has. Over the next seven years, Parker will complete seven “flybys” of Venus, using that planet’s gravity to pull it closer to the sun. Parker will enter the sun’s corona, or atmosphere, and get within 3.8 million miles of the star. The spacecraft will have to withstand intense radiation and temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. As Parker orbits the sun, its instruments will gather data about how energy and heat move through the corona and why solar winds and solar energy particles change speed.