Bulletin 4 4 November Introducing . . . Shannon Lucid This week’s audioconference guest speaker is NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid. Dr. Lucid has been an astronaut for 18 years. She holds the record for the longest time spent by a woman in space - 188 days aboard the Russian Space Station Mir. She also set a record for the longest time spent by an American in space. In December 1996 US President Bill Clinton awarded her Congressional Space Medal of Honour saying: “for her contributions to international co-operation in space . . . Shannon Lucid is an explorer in the best tradition of those who dare to challenge the unknown”. Dr. Lucid was born in 1943, in Shanghai, China and now lives in Bethany, Oklahoma with her husband Michael and their three children. She gained a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the University of Oklahoma in 1963, and her masters and Ph.D. degrees in biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma in 1973. Before starting her career as an astronaut Dr. Lucid was a senior laboratory technician at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and a chemist at Kerr-McGee University. She was selected for 19 months of astronaut candidate training by NASA in 1978. Here’s an outline of Dr. Lucid’s NASA experience... Dr. Lucid has been on five space flights and has logged 5,354 hours (223 days) in space. Her most recent mission was as a Board Engineer 2 on Russia’s Space Station Mir. Dr. Lucid holds an international record for the most flight hours in orbit by any non-Russian, and holds the record for the most flight hours in orbit by any woman in the world. Dr. Lucid currently holds the United States single mission space flight endurance record on the Russian Space Station Mir. After a year of training in Russia she took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 22 March 1996 aboard STS-76 Atlantis. After docking, she transferred to the Mir Space Station, performing numerous life science and physical science experiments. She returned to Kennedy Space Center on 26 September 1996. During this mission Dr. Lucid travelled 75.2 million miles in 188 days, 04 hours, 00 minutes, 14 seconds. A fourteen-day mission from 18 October to 1 November 1993 was recognised by NASA as the most successful and efficient Spacelab flight flown by NASA. The STS-58 crew performed various medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats, expanding knowledge of humans and animals on Earth and in space flight. They performed 16 engineering tests. The mission was accomplished in 225 orbits of the Earth, travelling 5.8 million miles in 336 hours, 13 minutes, 01 seconds. During this flight Dr. Lucid logged 838 hours, 54 minutes in space making her America’s female space traveller with the most hours in space. STS-43 Atlantis (2-11 August 1991) was a nine day mission during which the crew conducted 32 physical, material, and life science experiments. The mission was accomplished in 142 orbits of the Earth, travelling 3.7 million miles in 213 hours, 21 minutes, 25 seconds. STS-43 Atlantis was the eighth Space Shuttle to land at Kennedy Space Center. STS-34 Atlantis (18-23 October 1989) was a five day mission to set the Galileo spacecraft on its journey to explore Jupiter. The crew also performed numerous experiments involving radiation measurements, lightning research and a student experiment on ice crystal growth in space. The mission was accomplished in 79 orbits of the Earth, travelling 1.8 million miles in 119 hours and 41 minutes. During a seven day mission (17-24 June 1985) the STS-51G Discovery crew set up communications satellites for Mexico (Morelos), the Arab League (Arabsat), and the United States (AT&T Telstar). The mission took 112 orbits of the Earth, travelling 2.5 million miles in 169 hours and 39 minutes. Before her first flight Dr. Lucid worked at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory. She has also worked at the Kennedy Space Center’s Astronaut Office taking part in shuttle testing and launch countdowns. She also had stints as the Chief of Mission Support and the Chief of Astronaut Appearances. Frequently Asked Questions about Space More of those common questions people have about space . . . Question: How fast does a Space Shuttle travel? What is its altitude? How much fuel does it use? Answer: The Space Shuttle must reach speeds of about 28,000 kilometres per hour to remain in orbit. The Shuttle’s altitude is normally from 304 kilometres to 528 kilometres above sea level, depending on its mission. Each of the two Solid Rocket Boosters on the Shuttle carries more than one million pounds of solid rocket fuel. The Shuttle’s large External Tank is loaded with more than 500,000 gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which are mixed and burned together to form the fuel for the Shuttle’s three main rocket engines. Question: How much does a spacecraft weigh when it is in space? Answer: An object in space is said to be in a state of weightlessness. Objects in space near the Earth, the Moon, or other large bodies retain a small amount of weight due to the tiny amount of planetary gravity that continues to pull on them. Space activity Make up a Spacewalk Puppet Show Find out as much as you can about how astronauts move about in space when they are out of their spaceships. What are some of the dangers of space walking? What are some of the safety precautions they must take before walking in space? How do they stop themselves drifting away from the spaceship? What extra devices do they have to help them move around while they are in space? Make some astronaut string or glove puppets. Design and develop a mural or diorama of a space scene that you are able to use as a backdrop for a puppet show. This backdrop could include a spaceship, space station, some satellites, space junk, planets etc. Create a short play about a space walk using your puppets. Your presentation could also involve details of how your astronauts blasted off from Earth, docked with the space station (if you have one), got their gear organised for the walk etc. Present the play to the rest of the class, syndicate or whole school - or maybe at a school production or concert! Planet Profile All about . . . Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and is the third biggest in order of size. When viewed from Earth without a telescope, Mars is a reddish object of varying brightness. At its closest approach to Earth (55 million km), Mars is, after Venus, the brightest object in the night sky. Mars is best observed when it is directly opposite the sun in Earth’s sky and also at its closest distance from Earth. Such favourable circumstances repeat about every 15 years. Through a telescope Mars can be seen to have bright orange regions and darker, less red areas which change with Martian seasons. Mars has short, relatively warm southern summers and long, relatively cold southern winters. The reddish colour of the planet results from its heavily oxidised, or rusted, surface. The dark areas are thought to consist of rocks while the brighter areas apparently contain more fine, dust-sized particles than the dark regions. Bright caps, apparently made of frost or ice, mark the planet’s polar regions. Their seasonal cycle has been followed for almost two centuries. Mars has two small moons - Phobos and Deimos - which have many craters. The most detailed knowledge of Mars has come from six missions carried out by unpiloted U.S. spacecraft between 1964 and 1976. Mars today Mars has been in the news a lot lately. You may recall the Mars Pathfinder landed in early July and we got to see pictures of Mars as the rover explored the planet’s surface. The Mars Pathfinder operations team is currently experiencing communications difficulties with the Pathfinder lander on Mars. Here’s some up-to-date information on the operation . . . The Mars Pathfinder operations team is trying to re-establish communications with the Pathfinder lander and is confident that the spacecraft is still operating on the surface of Mars. The last time they were able to send a command to the Pathfinder lander instructing it to transmit a signal back to Earth was on Tuesday 7 October. Team members suspect that the spacecraft may not be receiving commands from Earth properly because the lander’s hardware has become much colder than normal. The lower temperatures cause the spacecraft radio hardware to operate outside the range of radio frequencies that ground controllers have used in the past. During the past three weeks the operations team has been transmitting to the spacecraft at a lower frequency and sweeping through a wider frequency range, a technique that has been used on other missions to attempt to cause the spacecraft receiver to lock on to the transmitted signal. Once ground controllers finish this, they’ll send commands instructing the lander to turn on its transmitter and send a signal back to Earth. The team say the mission has already exceeded all of its goals in terms of spacecraft lifetime and data return but they will keep talking to a wide range of experts to ensure they have done everything possible to re-establish communications. The science team is continuing to process and analyse the large volume of data sent back by Pathfinder’s lander and rover. Explorers mystery quiz - Bulletin 4 Answer the Explorers Mystery Quiz questions below correctly and be in to win a Panasonic cassette recorder for your class. You will find the answer to this week’s first question on your Explorers and Adventurers Mystery Trail poster. You might need to do a bit more research to answer question two. Fax your answers to the Telecom Adventure Line: 0800 253-020. Entries close at 5pm on Friday 7 November. The classes whose students correctly answer the most Explorers Mystery Quizzes during the Explorers and Adventurers programme will go into the draw for a grand prize in December. So good luck everyone. This week’s questions... Question one: What is the term for a collapsed star? Question two: Who is the planet Mars named after. Last week’s winner The winner of last week’s Explorers Mystery Quiz was Room 12, Taradale Primary School, Taradale, Napier. Last week’s answers... Answer one: Jupiter is the biggest known planet we see from Earth. Answer two: The Milky Way is a large disk-shaped group of stars that includes the sun and its solar system. It is called the Milky Way because it is a faint shining band that stretches across the Earth’s sky at night. Keep in touch If you’ve got an inquiry or want more information about the Space Explorers programme, the best way to get in touch with Danielle is through the Adventure Line fax (0800 253-020) or email her on: danielle.greig@telecom.co.nz