Space, the mystery above us
Bennu, the asteroid. Images captured by a NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx.
Written by Arohan Banik
We will go on a big adventure in space. Are you ready? Let’s
go!
Space is a mysterious place where there are planets, stars,
nebula, etc. It is pitch dark and it is a mystery whether aliens exist out
there or not. I watched many space videos and by watching, I got interested to
it. The solar system has 8 planets. So, Mercury is the first planet and the smallest
planet in our solar system. Next is Venus. It is the hottest planet in our
solar system. It is also called Earth’s sister. Because they are almost the
same size. The Earth is home. It is called a Goldilocks planet because it is
not too hot or not to cold, it is just the right temperature for staying alive.
Mars is the 4th planet of our solar system. It is called the red planet,
because there is reddish dust. Next is Jupiter. It is the 5th planet and the
biggest planet in our solar system. It has a big red spot which is sized to 3x bigger
than Earth! It also has the strongest storms inside the big red spot that are
even stronger than the storms on Earth. Next is Saturn, it is the 6th planet of
the solar system. It is famous because of its beautiful ring. Uranus is the
seventh planet of the solar system. It is cold and it is an ice giant. Last is
Neptune, the 8th planet of the solar system. It is also an ice giant. Earth is
fast as it takes 365 days to complete an orbit but Neptune is so slow going
around its orbit that it takes 165 years! Did you know, Elon Musk sent his 100,000-dollar
red car, Tesla Roadster to space? It will orbit around the Mars, and will
travel the maximum distance a car has made in history.
The dwarf planets are very small. They are Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. So, Pluto is the first dwarf planet and it’s the largest dwarf planet of the solar system. Next is Haumea, it is egg shaped. Next is Ceres and it is the largest asteroid. It is similar to the moon, too. Last is Makemake, it is similar to mars because it is red like Mars but it is just very small. Pluto was first discovered as the 9th planet of the solar system, but later, scientists marked it as a dwarf planet, because it was very small in size.
Asteroids are massive rocks that are found in the Kuiper belt. The whole group of asteroids on the Kuiper belt orbit around the sun. When an asteroid escapes its orbit, it can hit on Earth, Mars, Jupiter or the Sun. One asteroid called Apophis is sized 3x bigger than a football field. Scientists thought that it may hit the Earth's surface in 2029. But later they recalculated that it might hit in 2068. But they have the technology to send a missile to space and hit the asteroid to break it into smaller pieces of rocks. Japan sent a space probe called Hyabusa 2 to collect samples from asteroid Ryugu. Ryugu is 9 million miles away from Earth. Hyabusa 2 was launched on December 2, 2014 and came back to the earth's surface and landed in Australia in December 6, 2020. NASA also sent a spacecraft called OSIRIS-Rex to asteroid Bennu in 2016. It touched the surface of Bennu for 6 seconds to collect the samples and now it is on its way back to the Earth's surface.
OSIRIS-REx touchdown to the surface of Bennu (source: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Twitter thread)
The Moon is an object that does not have an atmosphere. If an astronaut stands on the Moon for 15 seconds without a spacesuit, the dust called regolith on Moon surface can cause eye irritation and sinusitis. The person will also have hypoxia, which means low oxygen in the body. There are so many craters on the Moon surface that you cannot count them! Those are the traces of asteroids falling on the moon surface which happened 3.87 billion years ago! India launched moon mission to study about the Moon. Chandrayaan 2 was launched by India on July 22, 2019 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. So, the rocket was rotating around the Moon and then it detached the lander called Vikram. It was trying to make a soft landing on the Moon, but before that happened, Vikram lost its signals and crash landed on the Moon surface. Later, NASA found it upside down on the surface of the moon.
Was it a great adventure around the whole universe? Haven’t
you had fun? I did!
Edited by my Dad
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