Chapter 8 Chapter 7 A Moon Is Born

A speck of cosmic dust drifts through space.It was about the size of a fist, a piece of metal, irregular in shape, with bumps and bumps on the surface, and weighed about twenty pounds.The dazzling sun shone on it like a spotlight, and it shone against the blackness of space like a speck of dust flying in a darkened theater.It rolled slowly around its own axis, and ever-changing glare and shadow appeared on its surface every moment. If it weren't for this cosmic dust spinning slowly, people might think it is suspended in space.In fact, it was rushing at many miles per second, rushing along a huge orbit around the sun.Since the beginning of our solar system, this cosmic dust has orbited the sun billions of times, as if the planets were each orbiting the sun in peaceful orbits.Its massive orbit spans the orbits of Venus, Earth and Mars.During the long journey of this cosmic dust, it is likely that these three planets will pass by thousands of times, almost colliding with each other.

Now this cosmic dust is moving closer to Earth.If an observer flew with it, he would see the Earth's surface gradually growing larger and brighter against the blackness of space.This cosmic dust took a path to collide with the earth, catching up with the earth from behind at its superior speed. The gravitational pull of Earth now adds to the velocity of the cosmic dust.The surface of the earth is getting bigger and bigger, and now it covers half of the sky.A few air atoms began to hit the surface in front of this dust, knocking off the fine cosmic dust that had accumulated on this surface over countless generations.A few more seconds later, this cosmic dust, now visible on Earth as a meteor, begins to glow as it crashes into the dense layer of air below.This amazing friction generates thousands of degrees of heat, and the meteor turns into a dazzling plume of metal vapor and white-hot air.Minutes later, a soft and fiery band still marks the meteor's path.The earth has gained about twenty pounds of mass with its atmosphere.

Every hour, the Earth's air swallows millions of particles of cosmic dust, most of which are so tiny that they can only be seen with a microscope.There are so many of them that they add about a thousand tons of mass to the earth every day.Many scientists believe that the earth and other planets were originally composed of countless billions of particles such as meteorites. These particles filled the space around the sun and gradually accumulated to form larger groups.The formation of the earth has not yet completely ended, and the fall of the meteor mentioned above is just one of the countless billions of events that made the formation of the earth possible.

No matter what breaks in from outer space, the earth always grabs it firmly with its gravitational giant hands.All the meteorites and the like that have fallen into this giant hand since ancient times are still part of the earth.Except for a few solitary atoms that escape into space from the topmost layers of the air, the earth has never given up a single bit of matter it has acquired.Gravity is a watchful, efficient guard. Just when the above-mentioned meteor turned into a white light and died, a different celestial body entered the scene.It emerges from the shadow of the earth, reflecting the sunlight vividly.It rushes through space like cosmic dust, and it's also made of metal; but it's otherwise quite different.Its shape is regular and round, and the metal surface is polished extremely smooth, so it reflects the sun and emits a dazzlingly strong light.It also weighs about twenty pounds.But this twenty pounds constitutes one of the most remarkable pieces of matter in Earth's natural history: the artificial satellite.This artificial satellite, like the others, was once part of the mass of the earth, but it has just left the earth and began to exist as a celestial body, equal in status to the moon.

Since the beginning of the earth's history, the flow of matter near the earth has always been in one direction.Now, for the first time ever, solid chunks of matter are moving away from Earth in the opposite direction. Matter proceeds in the opposite direction near the earth, which is only possible through the technological ingenuity of man.Man finds a way to overcome the force of gravity, which normally keeps everything bound to Earth.The propulsion force of the rocket motor pushes the artificial satellite out of the earth and into orbit around the earth.An artificial satellite is a moon made by humans.

Artificial satellites are not like the natural moon that lovers have stared at since ancient times, but complex and very sensible scientific tools.It is a metal projectile that does not move on its own, orbiting the earth, but it has become a revolutionary tool that can solve many problems that have never been answered.But scientists have even greater ambitions: The satellites they're building are meant to be astute and accurate observers.Satellites seem to be living things in many ways.It has devices that can see, hear, and feel what's going on in the green zone between the atmosphere and space.It has an electronic brain to remember its perceptions, and a radio voice to answer questions radioed from the ground

Satellites have many things to see, hear and feel that Earth-bound instruments could never observe.It has several artificial eyes that stare at the sun, scrutinizing the sun's ultraviolet rays.Others turned their eyes on the earth below, observing the ever-changing clouds.The artificial ear listens for the slight click of tiny dust particles hitting the satellite's metal surface, while other sense organs register larger dust particles, big enough to penetrate the satellite's shell.An instrument sensitive to heat that measures temperature.The magnetic sense traces the Earth's magnetic field, and ingenious devices detect charged particles emitted by the sun and record cosmic rays.

Everything observed by satellites is stored in electronic memory, which is a set of small magnetic cores. In some satellites, miniature tape recorders are used to record in the sky.Every time the satellite makes a circle and reaches the proper position, a radio signal will be sent out on the ground, ordering it to leak the stored information.The satellite then speaks in its radio voice, transmitting to the ground the data it has collected during the lap it has just made. The instruments carried by satellites are marvels of scientific and engineering design.Each instrument is so light that it is almost unbelievable, because even a single weight saved in the manufacture of the instrument may determine success or failure, making the satellite enter or fail to enter the predetermined orbit.If a particular instrument cannot be made within strict weight limits, it cannot be sent to heaven.Scientists have developed very complex plans to conduct these in-cabin experiments to obtain the most data with the least amount of weight.The Army, Navy, Air Force, some universities, and industry are involved in these experiments.

In the first batch of satellites, the batteries that supply the power accounted for the largest part and accounted for about one-third of the total weight of the satellites.The remainder of the weight is divided among various electronic devices such as telegraphs, transmitters, repeaters, multi-line telemeters and recorders.These devices are so small that the telegraph radios on the wrists of the comic strips' space monsters look clumsy by comparison.All miniature and wonderful products produced by modern electronics technology, such as semiconductors, printed circuits (printed circuits), small capacitors and magnetic cores, are used in various satellite devices. These products are extremely small and light, so they can all be packed into A small vessel no larger than six saucers stacked together.Each of these electronic gadgets has more parts than a large color television, yet the whole thing fits in the palm of your hand.The electronic equipment of the satellite can undertake all kinds of extremely complex tasks, such as sensing, measuring, storing information, transmitting data, etc., and consumes extremely little power.A few batteries can run the whole thing for a week or two.

Some of the newer satellites are equipped with solar cells.This promising instrument of the modern electronic century can convert vast amounts of solar energy into useful electricity.Solar cells are ideal for satellites because space has an inexhaustible supply of free sunlight.Unless cosmic dust hits satellites and destroys delicate circuits, radio and television equipment operating in space can function almost forever under the power of solar cells. Since the first Sputnik satellite began its lonely journey into space, the number of satellites has grown, although some of them have only been in orbit for a few weeks or months.At one point in the first month of 1962, a total of thirty-five man-made devices flew into space, many of which are still busy sending their scientific measurements to the satellite creators on earth.Not all of these devices are actual satellites.Soviet engineers successfully attacked the moon twice.On September 14, 1959, at five o'clock in the afternoon New York time, the first thing sent from the earth reached the moon.It is a spherical instrument package weighing 858 pounds. After flying for about 35 hours, it rushed to the lunar surface at a speed of 7,500 miles per hour.On October 6, 1959, a Soviet rocket, launched three days earlier, gliding around the Earth, directed two cameras at the far side of the Moon, following a radio command from Earth.A complex device inside the rocket developed the photographs, scanned them, and radioed the images back to Earth, offering glimpses of a lunar landscape that had not been seen since ancient times.The photos taken back revealed about 70 percent of the invisible part of the moon's surface.Soviet scientists, exercising the rights traditional to their discoverers, gave names to certain prominent craters, mountains, and plains.

Space scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union launched rockets into interstellar space by giving them enormous velocities, great enough to break through the Earth's gravity and enter orbit around the sun.Among these so-called planetary probes, the American Pioneer V mission was the most successful.The signal from its 150 watt transmitter can still be received from 13.3 million miles away.Although the transmitter was supposed to keep in contact with the ground 50 million miles away, unfortunately, the sound died out halfway due to battery leakage. Since the dawn of the satellite age, the weight of machines in space has grown from a few pounds to two-and-a-half tons like the U.S. Air Force's Midas satellite and more than five tons like the Russian satellite.These instruments really deserve the name of spaceships.But the big difference between a cannon projectile, a rocket, and a spaceship is that the latter will return to where it started, largely unharmed.In spaceflight, re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and eventual recovery is a big problem, with unexpected difficulties.We know that an object can become a satellite only if it has an extremely high velocity, which must exceed the critical velocity of about seventeen thousand miles per hour.But in order for the satellite to return to the ground intact, its extreme speed must first be eliminated.No satellite so far has carried enough fuel to just reverse the launch process, that is, to brake with rocket force and stop full speed.Most of the motion of the satellite must be eliminated to prevent the high temperature caused by friction when the satellite passes through the atmosphere.Of course, the main problem is to prevent the returning spacecraft from burning up like a meteor. U.S. space scientists conduct a series of Discoverer satellite experiments to retrieve a 300-pound instrument capsule ejected from a spinning satellite launched into orbit.At first, the test failed twelve times. It was not until August 11, 1960 that the capsule thrown out by the Discoverer XIII satellite was retrieved from the Pacific Ocean by a US Navy helicopter pilot. .The capsule had circled the earth seventeen times before the satellite threw the capsule back into the atmosphere after a radio command was issued from the ground.This is the first time an object has actually been recovered after a trip to space.After a few weeks, the Russians also successfully retrieved the two puppies, the first group of advanced creatures to travel to space and survive.Following this pair of space dogs, the first astronauts went to space in the spring and summer of 1961, the Russian majors Gagarin and Titov. In terms of astronaut flight experiments, the United States competed with the Soviet Union with the Mercury program, which was carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Since Lieutenant Colonel Allen.Xue Ba (Alan Shepard), Major Virgil.Geli Chong (Virgil Grissom) and Lieutenant Colonel John.After John Glenn made the famous space flights in history, the world is already very familiar with the shape of the Mercury spacecraft. These space pilots ride in round metal capsules that are larger at the bottom and smaller at the top, with the top flattened into a cone.Although the actions of the rocket booster and the satellite capsule itself are completely automatic, space pilots can control the height of the capsule and activate all flight control equipment, such as launching backward rockets, which bring people into the most important stage of space travel. The stage is safely lowered back to Earth.The space capsule is designed to avoid most of the heat generated by friction with the atmosphere. At this time, a parachute device took effect, allowing the capsule to fall safely into the ocean. It was during the technical development of the complex Mercury program that the training of seven space pilots was actively carried out from the summer of 1959 onwards.The actual launch of these satellites with Americans aboard them off the sands of Cape Ganavero (now Cape Kennedy) in Florida was an earth-shattering event; The result of thousands of hours of hard work.Human and mechanical movements must be perfectly integrated and well-timed actions.This action is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, each piece of which must fit with every other with perfect precision; and each piece must fall into its proper place at a predetermined instant.This kind of action is what engineering managers in the United States are good at. The time is in the early morning.The huge rocket proving ground at Patrick Air Force Base has been busy since last night.The launcher of the satellite is still surrounded by a pedestal. The pedestal is a steel frame. People standing on it can reach all parts of the rocket.Engineers and technicians are checking over and over the many functioning parts of this complex machine, its delicate brain, its electrical nervous system, and its mechanical muscles.Many tons of propellant are properly stored in the huge fuel tank inside the rocket, and the chemical energy contained in it is waiting to be released by people, becoming raging anger.Dense wires lead from the rocket to the platform, connecting the thousands of switches, relays and starters in this huge machine with the command post in the solid concrete hut.On the wall of the command center are rows of indicator lights, red, green, and white; there is also an automatic drawing board with a swinging pen to draw messages, and the green lines tremble silently on the screen of the oscilloscope. superior. There are thousands of items on the checklist before firing a rocket.After the last check mark was drawn, an order came out to remove the gantry.The platform slowly retreated, leaving the towering rocket standing on the base, like a huge tower.But the rocket is still tethered, a lot of thick wires that connect the rocket's brain to the platform next to it.Now the sun was up, and the huge rocket was shining brightly in the sunlight. Loudspeakers spread the plain message throughout the district! Two minutes before launch!The first two minutes. Tracking stations in the Bahamas and a string of islands to the southeast had been working for hours.They communicate directly with the transmitting stations by radio and submarine wires. Thirty seconds!Put pressure on the rocket! Now that the rocket is ready to launch, the countdown to ignition enters its final phase.The monotonous voice of the orderer, which spread throughout the district, tormented everyone's nerves.In those few seconds, the people who created this wonderful machine (the rocket) recalled thousands of hours of work, all kinds of troubles and many sleepless nights.In a few seconds, all their single-minded efforts will be culminated.They thought of the warrior who lay on the tip of the gigantic rocket.Whether it is success or failure has become an unambiguous proposition at this moment, and there is no room for carelessness. 210 ignition A ball of flame burst out from under the rocket.It flashes blindingly, rolls out, then settles.A thunderous boom engulfed and shook the entire area.The jet of burnt gas is getting more and more violent. In the noisy roar, we can hear a higher and higher sound. It is the pump that pumps the propellant for the first stage of the rocket. sound when. The huge rocket trembled.Just when the roar was so strong that it was unbearable, the towering structure began to rise slowly, like an elevator.The jets of air from the rocket's controls spray around its base.The rocket stood vertically in the air, supported by a large plume of incandescent gas.It continued to rise, but still slowly, the impetus of the exhaust gas desperately pushing the extremely heavy structure.The push of the exhaust gas became more and more violent.The speed of the rocket's ascent increases gradually.It rose faster and faster, trailing a large, irregular stream of steam on its tail.The rocket gradually flew farther away, and the brilliance of the exhaust flames also gradually decreased.Now, the rocket rushed upwards like a flying spear piercing the sky. In the hut, the busy pen is drawing on the long strip of paper.Radar and optical tracking instruments stare at the rocket's path, mapping its trajectory.The data is fed into the computer, and the rocket's future path is rapidly calculated. In a rocket, the motor deflects slightly, at the command of the brain.The flight path of the rocket gradually turned sideways to the east.A sensitive rotating compass keeps the rocket balanced.Since take-off, the astronaut has weighed on the recessed seat with his own increasing weight, as the rocket's velocity increases and the human body becomes heavier.He pushed forward relentlessly with the furious force of the rocket, which was now speeding through the thin air of the upper atmosphere.It's on the right track.According to the predetermined procedure, the top section of the rocket was thrown out, and the straight spaceship and its people were thrown into the air to float freely.The launch operation culminated with the astronauts entering orbit.The depleted booster (the rocket's lower section) lazily follows the top section, which also spins in its own orbit. During these operational phases, tracking stations on the ground kept an eye on the rocket's path as it ventured into the realm of space.These tracking stations are located on the islands, which are located under the rocket flight path and are also connected in a line. The islands where they are located are: Grand Bahama, San Salvador, Maya Valley Anna, Grand Turque, Puerto Rico and Antigua.The data obtained from their tracking are collected and sent to the computer, and within a minute or two the computer comes up with an answer, that is, information about the orbit, such as apogee, perigee, orbital inclination, rotation time, and so on. Astronauts move soundlessly through the boundless darkness of space.Now he weighs nothing, and if he wasn't strapped to his seat, he'd be floating anywhere in his little metal cabin.A few hours later, the retreating rocket to be used to re-enter the atmosphere will be launched. Before that, the astronaut will never encounter the lifts and landings that the pilots are accustomed to. Below is the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean near the equator.Long streaks of puffy clouds glistened in the sun and looked like little pieces of cotton stuck to the surface of the earth.The spherical shape of the Earth is evident from the great arc of the horizon.Only twenty minutes into the flight, the coast of Africa was in sight.This continent is contrasted with the dark sea.The satellite crossed the equator and headed for the Indian Ocean.The sun slipped behind the horizon, and seconds later the astronauts were in darkness for their first night.The universe outside was like a veil of complete blackness, dotted with continuously glowing, needle-sharp stars.Unobstructed by the atmosphere, the broad band of the Milky Way appears radiant. Shining in the moonlight, the spaceship flew over the west coast of Australia, crossed the equator northward, and flew across the vast Pacific Ocean.At this time, it was only an hour after the rocket took off. About twenty minutes later, the spacecraft reached the west coast of the American continent.At the same time, the sky above began to light up.A few minutes more, the clouds below began to glow, and a second later, the great sun shot above the horizon.The spaceship reflected the sun like a blinding rocket; the sun's radiation came almost as a corporeal thing. The continent below was in a gray dawn.The black ridges of the Coastal Mountains were barely visible against the dark gray fog.But the spacecraft was already shining in the sun, more than a hundred miles above the ground. The little sac flew over the California coastline, and a little more than three minutes later, he flew like lightning through 80 degrees west longitude, completing his first circle around the earth. The astronaut was, of course, more than just a passenger.He has been busy with countless technical tasks during the flight, carrying out his mission in space. This wonderful journey around the earth was repeated many times, and at a predetermined moment the timing had been checked many times, and the re-entry into the atmosphere began with great accuracy.The receding rockets canceled some of this incredible velocity, but there was still plenty of velocity left to make the descending capsule appear like an artificial meteor, shooting through the sky like a great fireball from the watchful ships below in the sea.When it descends to a suitable height, a small parachute is released, which acts in the air like the anchor of a sea ship to eliminate the swaying action of the bag in the air.Finally, its speed was limited to only twenty-five feet per second by the main parachute, which was used for airdrops and was sixty-three feet in diameter.As soon as the capsule fell into the water, a small explosive separator broke the parachute, preventing it from being carried by the wind and pulling the capsule around.In order to minimize the time required for human recovery after the capsule is overboard, the capsule has radio pointers, dye tracers and a five million-candlepower flashlight. A man-made satellite, whether manned or unmanned, is not just a gilded vessel or scientific sacrificial vessel or toy, infused with a great deal of scientific ingenuity, human courage, labor and money.Each satellite, with its observers or its multifaceted artificial senses at work in space, is a faithful watcher of the earth and sky, a laborer on the frontier of science.In terms of the knowledge it brought back to mankind, even if many balls as heavy as artificial satellites were cast out of pure gold, they would not compare to the great value of one artificial satellite.