July 2001 Volume 82 Number 7 "serving the protectors"
Exploring Outer Space on the Internet
By John Ballantyne

With so many science-fiction movies and television series, today’s generation is quite accustomed to the notion of space travel and visiting other worlds.

Thanks to the Internet, all the latest data on space exploration - including detailed images of planets and faraway galaxies - are readily accessible from your home computer.

There is a wealth of fascinating websites with information, pictures and features, guaranteed to interest all people of all ages.

NASA Home Page

http://www.nasa.gov/

An obvious starting-point is the grand-daddy of all space websites - that of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

A newsroom segment provides media releases, press kits and facts sheet. A comprehensive user-friendly site at the Johnson Space Center provides biographical information on space flight crews over the years.

The aspiring space traveller - or just the romantic day-dreamer - can read about how astronauts are selected and trained.

One can learn too about the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) - the only high-fidelity simulator capable of training crews for all phases of a mission. Computer-generated sound simulations come from hidden loudspeakers which duplicate those experienced during an actual flight. The SMS has no fewer than 6,800 malfunction simulations to devise scenario of systems failures or other circumstances to which astronaut crews and flight control teams must react.

There is a detailed FAQs segment devoted to living and working in space - especially coping with meals, sleep, exercise and personal hygiene in zero-gravity.

There is an exhaustive history of US manned spaceflight, accompanied by some excellent pictures, and a special women’s outreach initiative, “Milestones for Women in Aerospace”.

From the “Gallery Archives”, one can take a virtual tour of the International Space Station.

Planetary Exploration Timeline (1957 to 2009)

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/chrono.html

This US National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) chronology gives a list of all known (both successful and unsuccessful) lunar and planetary spaceprobes, dating from the pioneering Russian Sputnik Earth orbiter of 1957. There is also information about forthcoming space missions planned for the next eight years.

There are links to homepages of famous recent and ongoing missions, with information for both the non-specialist and the more technically-minded.

NASA Photo Gallery

http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/index.html

Here is a treasure trove of many of the best images from NASA’s planetary exploration programme. For photos of the planets, try the “Planetary Photojournal”, while “Welcome to the Planets” gives you detailed briefings on each planet’s mass, diameter, velocity, average distance from Sun, rotation period (length of day measured in earth days), maximum and minimum surface temperatures, atmosphere, and geographical peculiarities.

There are excellent images throughout, such as a Mars Atlas, which consists of maps based on pictures transmitted back to Earth by the Viking Orbiter spacecrafts.

Views of the Solar System

http://www.solarviews.com

Hosted by the Hawaiian Astronomical Society, this website presents a multimedia display revealing the splendour of the sun, planets, moons, comets, asteroids and other space objects. There are excellent pictures and commentaries, as well as information about the history of space exploration, rockets, astronauts, space craft and space missions, and hotlinks to other sites.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

“When the Hubble Space Telescope opens its eye in space,” Discovery Channel’s Hannah Holmes recently said, “it becomes a periscope to a neighbourhood that reduces our home planet to a crushingly tiny speck. Yet Hubble’s portraits of great streaming flocks of galaxies inspire an odd sense of intimacy. The entire universe is our home.”

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a co-operative programme of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), designed to function as a long-lived space-based observatory for the benefit of the international astronomical community.

Hubble’s 2.4-metre reflecting telescope has been operating since 1990. Because of its location above the filtering effect of the Earth’s atmosphere, it can produce high-resolution images of astronomical objects ten times better than can ground-based telescopes.

Hubble has provided astonishingly detailed images of planets, stars and galaxies, and has revolutionized our understanding of the universe and its origins.

http://hubble.stsci.edu/

The US Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI) has a gallery of Hubble images and also provides special space science education for youngsters.

http://www.scitech.org.au/InFocus/_/Hubble_Telescope/hubble_telescope.html

Here is another excellent website, which includes more Hubble telescope pictures, a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hubble”, and a special “Kids’ Corner: Amazing Space”.

SOHO Home Page

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

Another triumph of international collaboration is the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a European-built spacecraft launched five years ago to study the sun from close range.

SOHO’s website hosts a remarkable collection of pictures, and reveals the sun as a spectacular and forbidding world, erupting in thousands of explosions every day, shaken by giant superquakes, and swept by huge solar tornadoes as wide as Africa - with typical wind speeds of 50,000 kilometres per hour, which can become ten times faster in gusts.

Astronomical Society of South Australia

http://www.assa.org.au

Don’t forget our own backyard. Australia, with its unpolluted atmosphere and clear skies, is one of the best places on Earth from which to observe the heavens.

The Astronomical Society of South Australia is the oldest society of its kind in Australia and next year will be celebrating its centenary.

The society’s website provides:

• A calendar of events: monthly meetings open to the public, special groups for beginners and public viewing nights.
• Information each month on what to look out for in the night sky. (At present, the red planet Mars is the fifth brightest object in the sky after the sun, moon, Venus and Jupiter. This is because the Earth’s and Mars’s respective orbit paths have brought them closer than for a dozen years).
• Hyperlinks to monthly sky charts.
• Viewing conditions.
• A gallery of stunning colour pictures, taken locally, of the southern lights, lunar eclipses, as well as long-distance shots of galaxies and nebulae.

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