About NASA’s space programs

March 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This agency is located in United States of America and is responsible for all kinds of space programs and research in the aerospace and aeronautics field. The mission statement of National Aeronautics and Space Administration is to probe the future and explore space and make new discoveries in the field of aerospace.  NASA has undertaken many events to explore space like the Apollo moon landing mission, Space Shuttle and Skylab Space station. It came into operations on 1st October in the year 1958 after replacing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NASA has developed an Earth Observing System to understand Earth in a better manner. NASA has been exploring bodies in the Solar system. For this effort it has undertaken mission like Great Observation, New Horizons, Big Bang and many other programs.

NASA shares its researches and data with a number of national and international organizations who seek interest in such information. NASA has undertaken many missions to probe into the heavenly bodies that exist near the surface of Earth. Some of these missions include Mariner program which was designed to investigate the planets like Venus, Mars and Mercury. The pioneer program was another mission which was undertaken to study the planetary bodies and was launched in the year 1978. The Voyager program was another unmanned mission launched by National Aeronautics and Space Administration to study the planetary alignments and different planets. It was designed to study the planets Jupiter and Saturn and their orbits.

There were also manned programs launched by National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Among these was the Space shuttle program launched in 1970’s and 1980’s. The ASTP program was also launched by NASA known as Apollo Soyuz Test Project which took place in 1975 was the last Apollo flight for United States of America. Space Shuttle program was undertaken in the year 1981 in the month of April.

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Space and Universe

March 7, 2011 Leave a Comment

What is the difference between space and universe? It seems to be a very difficult question to answer and even understand the difference between them. Space is considered to be wider as compared to the universe. There have been many people who have expressed their thoughts on space and universe. The universe is believed to have born with a big bang which is referred to as a dense point. It just cannot be counted as to how old our universe is. The universe has been expanding gradually and this expansion is faster even than the speed of light. The universe has almost doubled in its size and is 100 times bigger now than what is was before. This burst of expansion is called as inflation. After the inflation the universe grew at a slower rate. This led to the expansion in the space. As a matter of fact the universe began to cool and matter was formed.

The universe is filled with a number of objects which are named as photons, electrons, protons, neutrons and anti-electrons. The universe was very hot. This heat resulted in breaking smashed atoms with huge forces. These broken pieces scattered all around the universe. They became dense just like the fog. It took more than three lakh years for the matter to cool down and atoms to form. There was a new form of energy discovered known as dark energy which characterized the universe. The universe began to slow down gradually when the dark energy was discovered. This phenomenon gave birth to the solar system. Then there were stars, galaxies and many other objects discovered in the space.

Space and universe is a very wide and interesting concept to study. There are many heavenly bodies that our universe comprises of. One can go on and on exploring them and learning. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been exploring such bodies and launching new programs.

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Astronomy and the Mayans

March 3, 2011 Leave a Comment

Several ancients civilizations showed advanced knowledge is the stars and constellations but few can match the mastery of the Mayan civilization in this field. The Mayan civilization generated worldwide curiosity recently for their possible prediction of he end of the world in 2012. Even Hollywood could not resist the charm of this culture and churned out a few movies based on this subject. The Mayan calendar is known to be the most accurate, even more precise that the current Gregorian calendar in use globally. The calendar was able to predict events such as eclipses for the next 6000 years with an error quotient of only one day. The Mayan calendar was diving into cycles that lasted 3 million years, with each cycle being subdivided into units of 20, 400, 8000 and 158,000 years.

The calendar was used by the Mayans to make tough calculation to find a day of week for a certain date that could be hundred or thousands of years in the past or future. The concept of zero that was accepted by the world much later was already in use by the Mayans. They also used days of the calendar to make complex and accurate astronomical measurements even though they did not have a decimal system or fractions. After observing the revolution of Venus for a thousand years, the Mayan noted that its year lasted 584 days, close to the 583.92 days calculated by modern astronomical methods. It is difficult to decipher the true extent of Mayan astronomical knowledge as most of their astronomy was interlinked with their religion. The Mayans recorded their history, findings, culture and genealogy in the form of highly complex hieroglyphics are still being decoded today. New discoveries are being made every day about the achievements of this great civilization. For reasons yet unknown, at the peak of their advancement, the great Mayan cities were abandoned sometime around 840 AD and their entire culture mysteriously disappeared.

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Future of NASA

February 23, 2011 Leave a Comment
The NASA insignia.

Image via Wikipedia

National Aeronautics and Space Administration popularly known as NASA is one of the biggest organization that has been undertaking many missions to explore space. NASA has launched a number or mission some of which have been successful and some have failed. Yet NASA continues to explore the space and make some researches. It was during the 1990’s decade when National Aeronautics and Space Administration faced a number of problems like reduction in its annual budgets and congressional forces. The administrator of NASA during the 1990’s was Daniel Goldin adopted an approach to reduce the costs incurred. He invented some better and cheaper methods to tackle the problems and deliver the performance.

This methodology was not a success and was widely criticized. This methodology was again evaluated on certain grounds. Therefore after that failure NASA executed an affordable and sustainable program based on robotic and human programs for exploring space and its surroundings. This method used scientific knowledge to develop and acquire systems and fundamentals to learn more about the planet Earth. The future of NASA is very bright as they have many missions yet to undertake. NASA has also become a hub for attracting young talents and youth to learn more about National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The future mission of NASA is to explore planets like Jupiter and cover half of the solar system.

It has a larger and improved Mars Science Laboratory under construction which is to be launched in the year 2011. Although National Aeronautics and Space Administration has faced a number of challenges but it has still conquered its hopes and ideas. The New Horizons mission of NASA plans to explore the planet Pluto and study its existence and features. There are also many job openings at NASA year on year. The youth can easily apply for such openings and can be a part of such a prestigious organization of the world.

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