Star And Their Solar Systems

1. STARS AND THEIR SOLAR SYSTEMS Our Solar System moves through the local inter stellar cloud called The Local Fluff, 30 light years across, which is turn sits within a larger chimney shaped cloud, The Local Bubble, 300 million light years in length, filled mainly with Hydrogen, some Helium. Traces of Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen found are the remnants of earlier Supernovae as are the clouds themselves. Our Milky Way is supposedly in the Galactic Habitable Zone as in turn, Earth orbits the Sun in a Planetary Habitable Zone. Closer to the centre of the galaxy it’s much more turbulent, further out there’s not enough density for stars with planetary systems to form. Our Sun is likely at least a third generation star; else, all of the elements needed for the chemistry of life would not be available within its Solar System. At the centre of the Milky Way is a super massive Black Hole 20 million kilometers across with a mass 3.7 million times our Sun’s, also floating there are O Type or Blue Giant stars 10 – 50 times larger than the Sun throwing out titanic amounts of UV radiation. The Suns Heliosphere or Heliosheath, carried by its Solar Wind, stretching 3 times past the distance of Neptune is our first line of defense from inter-galactic cosmic radiation. The Earth’s Magnetosphere in turn protects us from that same Solar Wind.

2. The Universe - Our place in The Milky Way – The History Channel - (45 minutes) View Video As a Star is born, the Planets are created from its afterbirth, the disc of debris surrounding it. Ergo, the planet Earth is nearly as old as the Sun, around 4.5 billion year of age. As galaxies are the sub-division of the universe, solar systems such as our own are the sub-division of the galaxies. Somewhat akin the creation of our Sun, the Earth formed initially from the coalescing of its left over debris. Having reached a critical mass, its increasing gravimetric pull caused it to attract more and more of the local debris. Earth at this time would have been a toxic scorching volcano ridden place with flowing lava being the only rivers to be found. We still have remnants from the early debris field of the Sun floating around in the Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter.

3. The planets further out in our Solar System tend to be gaseous as this is where most of the Hydrogen and Helium residual from the birth of the Sun would have been pushed.

4. THE ASTEROID BELT The Asteroid Belt is important to our understanding of the birth of Planet Earth as its rocks are uncontaminated fingerprints that can help us understand the initial chemical composition in play when the Earth was forming. No such evidence can be found from the Earth itself as they would have been chemically altered through the fiery scorched place Earth was then. Asteroid continue to drop to earth to this day ranging in size from a small rock which burns up in the night sky which we know as Shooting Stars to ones 100’s of kilometers across, with the capacity to cause life eliminating events as was the case with the Dinosaurs, around 65 million years ago. There is also the possibility this event was caused by a Comet originating from The Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud. An Asteroid fragment is reclassified a Meteor only when it makes it to the surface of the planet intact. The measurement of the age of Meteors allowed the accurate determination of the age of Earth. This debris field orbits between Mars and Jupiter and its viewed the gravitational pull of Jupiter is what has prevented them from coalescing, as was the case with Earths formation, to form larger planetoids or on through to a new planet.

5. The Universe – Meteors & Comets – The History Channel - (45 minutes) View Video

6. Meteor Strikes When an Asteroid strikes it becomes a Meteor. Barringer Crater The best example of an Asteroid - Meteor strike we have on the Planet today is The Barringer Crater in Arizona, created 50,000 years ago. The Asteroid, composed of nickel and iron, was about 50 metres across and weighed 300,000 tons. When it exploded with a force equal to 10 megatons or about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, it was travelling at a speed of more than 45,000KM/H. The diameter of the creator is 1KM and 0.75KM deep. The blast here would have vapourised a city the size of London.

7. Chelyabinsk meteor - Our most recent February 2013, Chelyabinsk, Russia, experience a Meteor blast overhead with a force equal to that of 13 Hiroshima bombs, 200 kilotons of TNT, from a rock not much more than 15 metres across but travelling at 63,000KM/H. A minute later, the shock wave blew in the windows of 4,000 buildings and was picked up by shockwave detectors all round the globe. It’s the most powerful Meteor strike for more than a century.

8. Tunguska In 1908, Russia, this Meteor leveled 16 million trees across an area the size of London. This meteor would not have been more the 30 – 50 metres in diameter. Its impact energy is calculated at 10–15 megatons of TNT. These impact types are estimated with a frequency of once per 500 years. This Meteor did not impact the surface which had baffled scientists for nearly a century until it was realised, it exploded atmospherically, with an enormous shockwave flattening the trees. Recent simulations show a much smaller Meteor exploding 10 – 15KM above the surface would have been sufficient to have caused the surface damaged observed.

9. Chicxulub crater – Dinosaur Extinction Located underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, it triggered the extinction of the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago The Meteor was 15KM across, it exploded with a force of 100 million megatons tons of TNT, send a giant vapourised plume of rock into outer space, superheating the air temperature to hundreds of degrees. The falling plume triggered firestorms across the planet choking the atmosphere with soot and dust, the Dinosaurs stood no chance with only the smallest of creatures being able to escape in sufficient numbers to survive. A crater was punched 30KM deep and 180KM round, into the Earth’s crust which now forms the Cenotes sinkholes, the only remaining surface evidence of the impact.

10. Asteroids - The Good the Bad and the Ugly – BBC - (60 minutes) View Video Dr Iain Stewart - The truth about Meteors – BBC - (60 minutes) View Video

11. NASA maintains a live map of Near Earth Objects monitoring all of known object trajectories attempting to provide an early warning system in the event of a future impact. They’re monitoring one they’ve named Apophis, around 300 meters in size, which will have a close Earth encounter predicted in 2029 but not more than a 1/40,000 which is not a 0 chance of impact.

12. COMETS Beyond Asteroids, we have another type of rock in our Solar System, Comets, the best know of which is Halley’s Comet, visiting every 75–76 years. Most Comets are believed to originate from the Oort Cloud, part of which extends uncomfortably beyond the boundary of the Solar System, 1 – 2 light years from the Sun. Closer there is also The Kuiper Belt just beyond Neptune. They travel 3 times faster than Asteroids. Because Comets formed further from the Sun they were able to retain larger amounts of volatile elements such as the ice, they’re recognisable by their vapour tails, pointed away from the Sun, as they orbit closer to it and its Solar Wind, with its Core camouflaged by its illuminated Coma. Given they also contain organic matter they and for that matter Asteroids remain in the debate as a delivery mechanism for the Origins of Life on Earth. Just as the gravity of Jupiter can nudge Asteroids out of orbit to a collision course with Earth, Neptune can do the same to Comets from The Kuiper Belt. Jupiter’s gravity also tends to shield Earth from incoming Kuiper Belt based Comets as evidence with the 1994 Shoemaker–Levy 9 Comet crashing into its atmosphere.

13. As Comets repeatedly pass closer to the Sun when orbiting, losing their ice through their tail, they continue on to become more like Asteroids, eventually having lost all of their ice. The tails of Comets are generated by the melting of the ice it carries as it approaches in closer orbit to the Sun. It’s also postulated that a collision of Comets to early Earth could have carried nearly half the water which fills our oceans today. They’re often called “Dirty Snowballs’ as often up to half their mass is water. There’s a problem though, the composition of Comet water differs from that of our oceans as they carry twice the amount of ‘Heavy Water’ formally called Deuterium Oxide, which contains a larger than normal amount of the Hydrogen isotope, Deuterium. The theory is still not being ruled out as Comets which formed closer to the Sun may be a better match to that found in our oceans.

14. Comet Halley This is the story of Comet Halley’s colourful history and how science through the mid 20th century onwards came to understand them. A piece of historical analytical science at a time we were not fully sure as to the cause of Dinosaur extinction. Also, it will be 2062 before Comet Halley returns. The best known of all Comets, with a narrow elliptical orbit, travelling in the opposite rotation, retrograde motion, to the planets as well as out of the Solar System plane by nearly 40 degrees. When it arrived in 1910 it was a huge media event, the Carbon Monoxide identified in its tail caused one observer to lock himself in his room for a month for fear of poisoning following a newspaper headline reporting “TWO SEE COMET AND DIE”. A Chinese chronicle of 625AD noted correctly that a Comet does not emit its own light but reflects it from the Sun, well deduced for that time. Because of the Comets shape with its tail it was called a Broom Star as perhaps brooms are used to sweep thing away, Comet Halley came to represent changes to come on Earth, mostly catastrophic, war, disease and the death of Kings.

15. For the Britain of 1066AD it was an bad omen. The Battle of Hastings was decisively lost to the French Normans, by the then Anglo Saxon King Harold, a significant turning point in British history. It was for a long time believed to have been the Star of Bethlehem, which guided The Three Wise Men to the Nativity, when Christ was born, modern Astronomers reverse calculating its orbital history were able to disprove this. Giotto was the artist to paint The Star of Bethlehem scene in 1301 with Comet Haley in the background. Astronomers and Philosophers had been confused for centuries as to where they came from and what were their paths as they passed by to disappear. Edmund Halley collected observations on 24 Comets using Newton’s new law of gravity, giving an elliptical curvature to its orbit but his key discovery was that one with a similar orbit had passed 76 years before and yet another 76 years before that. When he wrote his book he predicted it would return in 1758, beyond his lifetime, when it did it took his name Astronomers used the historical orbital calculations to successfully predict the comets trajectory into the future for improved observation leading them to understand the comet itself was of irregular shape with a 2 day rotation. It became tagged as a Dirty Snowball.

16. Jan Oort postulated the home of Comets at the outer reaches of the Solar System, hence, The Oort Cloud. At the time Comet Halley arrived in 1986, NASA’s space exploration had been in decline following the enormous expense of The Apollo Moon landing and The Voyager missions to the outer planets. Not to worry, the Europeans, Japanese and Russian were collaboratively sending and armada of space probes. The European Giotto probe passed within 600KM revealing images showing a nucleus to be a dark peanut-shaped body, 15 km long, 7 km to 10 km wide. Comet Haley – The Apparition - 1985 – BBC - (60 minutes) View Video Catching the Comet – (40 minutes)

17. View Video

18. VOYAGER MISSION – THE OUTER PLANETS The Voyager, pair of space probes, following the successful Apollo, manned mission to the Moon, were sent on an epic journey to explore our Solar system and its outer reaches. This is their story representing a golden age of space exploration. The outer planets are gaseous because the after birth of the Sun would have pushed the lighter gases, Hydrogen and Helium, furthest from itself, when exploding to life. From the Asteroid Belt inwards the planets are solid, composed of rock. For three and a half decades they investigated the outer reaches of our Solar system. Each spacecraft carried a message in a bottle, The Golden Disc, a snapshot of humanity, a message to the stars being the only manmade objects to leave our Solar system to the galaxy beyond. In the mid 1950’s simply getting to the outer planets was thought to be impossible. At that time there was no rocket powerful enough to escape the power of the Sun and even if we did the vast distances involved would mean a trip to Neptune would take the better part of half a century, the outer planet were simply out of reach. It took a brilliant mathematician in the early 1960’s to solve a centuries old problem, the three body’s problem. How to calculate the gravitational pull on a spacecraft as it travelled between the Sun and the Planets and how this would deflect it trajectory. He was able to use his solution to have an orbiting planets gravity carry a spacecraft with it on its journey around the Sun and then sling shot it further out in the Solar system to the next planet, opening a theoretical gateway to the outer planets, without the need for rocket propulsion beyond the launch of the vehicle from Earth.

19. In 1965 a graduate student was set the task to convert this theory to reality and work out when the planets would be in sufficient alignment to allow this sling shooting from one to the next all the way to the outer Solar system. The planets were found to best align in 1975 and would not do so again for another 176 years after that.

20. The Golden Record At that time NASA had never built a space probe designed to last longer than a few months nor had they the funding needed. They turned to a young member of the Voyager team with a passion for storytelling, Carl Sagan, to promote the project in the public’s mind and that of congress. Knowing the probes would never return he suggest placing a metal plate on each with a message from Earth which might one day be picked up by an alien civilization. It was a gold plated copper record, a gift of recording and greeting from this planet to those of some other. Each disc contained a combination of sounds and pictures and above all music, from Chuck Berry to Bach. The Voyager Golden Record, nearly two hours in length, the Video link to it is below.

21. Voyager - Golden Record – (110 minutes) View Video The purpose of The Golden Record was an attempt to tell our story as best we could, presenting what we knew, hoped for and our passion. The public’s imagination was fired up and the Voyager project funding was approved through congress. The inscriptions on the surface of the disc also gave a cosmic road map to any extra-terrestrial on how to get here to visit.

23. Jupiter Launched in 1977, when Apple is just founded, Fleetwood Mac released Rumours and not long since the Apollo moon landings, the Voyager space probes were launched to explore the outer planets of the Solar system. It would take 2 years to reach the first planet, Jupiter, 800 million kilometers away on the first step of a 12 year journey. Before Voyager, the best images we had were fuzzy photographs. The pictures Voyager returned were pristine showing features of its turbulent atmosphere in detail which before then could only have been imagined. A planned part of the mission was to also visit 1 of Jupiter’s 4 moons, Io, the closest of the moons to the planet. The intensity of the radiation coming from the planet meant the probe would take half its total planned for radiation dose in just that one visit.

24. The reward, Voyager 1 observed the first ever volcanic eruption on another world. A paradigm shift in cosmological thinking as the outer planets to then had all been consider geologically dead in the freeze of outer space. Jupiter as the largest planet could hold a thousand Earths.

25. Had it grown a couple of dozen times larger it might have reached that critical mass to compress itself becoming a star with we then having a second sun in our Solar space, a binary star system with every object casting two shadows.

26. The Great Red Spot is large enough to hold half a dozen Earths. Jupiter has a ring though nothing a spectacular as Saturn.

27. King of the Planets, Killer of Comets & Protector of Earth. The largest planet in the Solar System, a Gas Giant with a violent atmosphere of storm clouds composed of Sulphur, Ammonia and Water formations, larger than our planet, 84% Hydrogen and 14% Helium, 11 times the diameter of Earth, 16 known moons orbit it, 70% of the mass of the entire Solar System is there, life might be to be found on the moon of Europa with the frozen water there. Its day is short at 10 hours long and takes nearly 9 Earth years to orbit the Sun. It cleared the way for the relatively peaceful existence of the inner planets hoovering up the local debris, spitting out some towards the Sun and others outward in the direction of the outer Solar System. Our most recent example, Comet Shoemaker - Levy 9 occurred in 1994.

28. Had they hit Earth it would have been a life eliminating event. Its estimated Jupiter gets hit by Asteroids or Comets 8,000 times more regularly than Earth so it would appear reasonable to state, having it as a neighbor is to our benefit, that’s not to say that one day Jupiter might sling shot one of them straight at us. The Jupiter system was first recorded by Galileo, including 4 of its moons Its Giant Red Spot is the eye of an enormous storm raging for at least 300 years with wind speeds around 500KM/H taking 10 days to complete a rotation. Streams of fierce jets circle the planet giving the bands we observe move in alternating east west directions, an exaggerated version of Earths weather pattern but powered from intense heat coming from within. Jupiter is surround by so many moons not all have yet been identified. The first major moon is known Io be filled with lots of active volcanoes some the size of California, which shoot magma 350KM into space. Ganymede is the largest of the moons in the Solar System, 5 times the size of ours, Callisto, is the most heavily cratered, Europa, the Ice Queen might have under ice in a mix

29. similar to where life can be found on Earth, in deep oceans next to nutrient supplying volcanic thermal vents. Finding even microbial life there would change the world view to the confirmed possibility of life existing in vastly more places through the Cosmos. Jupiter’s Magnetosphere is also the largest of the planets, it has its own Auroras 1,000 times more powerful than ours which we can hear on radio. The Universe - Jupiter – The Giant Planet - The History Channel – (45 minutes) View Video Jupiter - Comet Shoemaker - Levy 9 – Galileo Probe – Discovery Science – (50 minutes) View Video

30. Jupiter – Voyager – First Reports – 1980 – BBC - Horizon – (50 minutes) View Video

31. Saturn Another 2 years and 1.6 billion kilometers further for Voyager to reach Saturn, the second largest planet, first glimpsed by Galileo. The rings are composed of billions of tiny moons, chunks of snow and ice each a metre across, the gaps between the rings are produced by the periodic tug of one of the larger outer moons, Following the spectacular images returned from Jupiter and Carl Sagan’s continued firing of their imagination, the public were queuing up in 1981 as the Voyager probes entered to orbit of Saturn, the ringed planet. The rings quickly proved the star attraction of what was to be a flyby which would only be hours long. Voyager 1 was diverted, at great cost, to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan; with an atmospheric density similar to Earth it was thought it might even harbour some basic life forms. To get the views needed would result in its trajectory throwing the probe out of the plane of the Solar system, not visiting any of the remaining planets. On top of that, the flyby was a disappointment with its cameras unable to penetrate Titan’s atmosphere to offer clues to whether life might exist beneath. The project’s first major setback.

32. Since The Voyager probed, The Cassini probe has been sent to orbit and study Saturn. Lord of the Rings. The showstopper of our Solar System, a massive frigid ball of Hydrogen and Helium, the second largest, 750 times the size of Earth, its day length is nearly 11 hours, its orbit nearly 30 Earth years, the least dense of the planets, less dense than water, with Polar storms larger than the USA, its lightening a million times stronger than on Earth and surrounded by icy space debris of dust to boulders, house sized, rings spinning at speeds up to 60,000KM/H and stretching the width of 21 Earths just 20 metres thick.

33. The rings, 7 of known number with differing compositions, may have initially formed from some of Saturn’s moons colliding and then pulverizing themselves over time or other type of collision from an externally orbiting object. They shimmer in sunlight because of the ice, reflecting it. They’re thought to be relatively new at just 300 million years of age with their longevity estimated from a few hundreds of millions on to a billion years. The rings are kept intact by small shepherd moons.

34. Galileo was also first to observe and its rings. Its rocky core was several times the size of Earth before attracting its outer layers of Hydrogen and Helium. It weather, whilst violent only changes slowly over time. Wind speeds reach 1,500KM/H. At its South Pole a hurricane type storm, two thirds the diameter of Earth, has been observed with an actual eye- wall, making it the only hurricane event to occur on another planet. It’s therefore also a window allowing scientists look further through its atmosphere, just like looking through the eye of a hurricane here from above. The North Pole has a perfect hexagonal formation hovering over it, known of being there since it was first observed by the Voyager space probe. Titan, the size of planet Mercury, its largest moon, is the only moon other than our own to have been explored, landing a probe there. Its surface looks remarkably similar to Earth, with mountains, river beds created by flowing liquid Methane, dunes, an extended atmosphere mimicking that of early Earth’s with Nitrogen and Methane, the only moon to have one. Nitrogen and Methane when stimulated by UV light begins to produce organic compounds, a life ingredient but it’s cold at nearly -200C.

35. Amongst its 48 moons, Enceladus; an eight the size of ours, the smallest body observed to have activity, with its geysers erupting water, hundreds of kilometers into the atmosphere, unburdened by any real amount of gravity. These geysers are thought to feed Saturn’s outer most ring. It’s the whitest object observed due to the snow ice falling back to its surface from the geysers, also, putting it at the top of the list in the search for life.

36. Saturn has a day of the week named after itself, Saturday. The Universe – Saturn – Lord of the Rings – The History Channel – (45 minutes) View Video

37. Uranus Next Voyager stop, Uranus, 5 years at 80,000KM/H, another 3.5 billion kilometers and a further setback for the team, the cameras were jammed, unable to pan which would have severely limited the number of pictures next to be taken. Despite their fix, they also knew the cameras would struggle with the limited light so far from the Sun. Longer photo exposure times would also be needed to compensate but to do this without blurring the images as Voyage 2 slung by the camera angle would need to continuously rotate to remain focused on the same area of the planet. Fantastic achievements for their time. The images returned were pristine but Uranus itself offered little with its dead cold core there was nothing to drive an atmosphere. Its moons were more interesting throwing up some geological puzzles to ponder as to their surface. This mesmerizing, featureless, hazy, gas giant blue marble of Methane is a calm ice world 4 times Earths diameter with an orbit of 84 Earth years rotating on its side once per 17 hours. It believed to be the only of the outer planets without a heated core, hence the calm atmosphere.

38. This was the first planet to be discovered by telescope, beyond the range of the human eye at which time there were only 6 known planets. It has 5 rings, unlike those of Saturn; they’re thin comprised of dark rocky dust likely form when a Comet collided with one of the planets 27 moons. The inner moons have fast orbits some believed to be as little as half a day.

39. Neptune Final Voyager stop, Neptune, 3 more years and 1.6 billion kilometers. This last planet had resisted investigation from even the most powerful telescopes. The navigational challenge to get the images they wanted just passing over its north pole meant trajectory adjustment to an interval of just 1 second accuracy was needed with no second chance, after a travel time to then of 12 years. The cameras also needed to be focused 2 weeks in advance based on what storm weather conditions were to be forecast. Consider the difficulty we have here to forecast our weather. They got everything right and again rich content images were returned. Voyager 2 also imaged Neptune’s moon, Triton with its polar caps of frozen Nitrogen at just 40 degrees above absolute zero with active Nitrogen geysers on its surface. The Solar System is alive even at it furthest reaches.

40. It not possible other than to include the last image Voyager 2 took of Neptune with is moon, Triton, as it travelled onward to leave the Solar system.

41. This is a violent ice world with the fastest most unpredictable wind storms, up to 1,500KM/H, 2 – 3 times faster than even those on Jupiter, in our Solar System. It’s thought its hot core could be driving the Methane wind systems. Its Great Dark Spot appears and vanishes without warning, its inner swarm of moons dash around in less than a day. Neptune has a complex system of 13 moons, some it may simply have trapped as they passed by having been knocked out of their previous orbit. Neptune’s largest moon, Triton is roughly the same size as Earth’s moon, it the coldest object in our Solar System, approaching nearly absolute zero, primarily because of its reflective surface. Geyser like eruptions spew liquid Nitrogen, Methane and Ammonia nearly 8KM high which instantly freeze falling like snow back to the moon’s surface. Geological activity has scientists wondering if there’s water trapped under the icy exterior with its possibility of life presence. With the demise of Pluto it’s now our outermost planet, again like Uranus, its diameter is 4 times that of Earth, with an orbit of 165 Earth years and a day length of 16 hours. The Universe – Outer Planets – The History Channel – (45 minutes) View Video The Universe – Ringed Planets – The History Channel – (45 minutes) View Video

43. Beyond the Solar System More data had been collected by the Voyager probes on the outer planets than in the rest of human history. Voyager 1 which had left the plane of the Solar system was to perform one final and special task, turn around and take an image of the entire Solar system with all of its planets at a distance from Earth of 5.5 billion kilometers; the planets would not be larger than a single pixel. By the time the signal reached Earth it was just a millionth of a billionth of a watt of power. It was then boosted and sent on to Pasadena where the image was assembled. Yet again Carl Sagan captured the imagination of the globe when he presented the picture of Earth as a tiny bluish dot less than the tenth of the size of a pixel. The cameras were then switched off to save power. They’re now nearly 20 billion kilometers away and still sending back information about the empty space they’re travelling through. The information sent takes 15 hours to get here travelling at close to the speed of light. In 2012 they moved past the influence of the Suns Solar Wind out into the inter-stellar space of our Milky Way galaxy, a new chapter in human history exploration. The probes have enough power left in their nuclear drive to keep going and sending information until 2020. They’ll get to the next closest star to the Sun in some 40,000 years. Carl Sagan also realised the message on Voyagers The Golden Disc was powerfully symbolic to ourselves as it would out live the pyramids and possibly even ourselves, leaving behind the only record of our once presence in Cosmos.

44. Voyager - To the Final Frontier – BBC - (60 minutes) View Video

45. Pluto – Now departed Recently astronomers decided not to call it a planet anymore. It’s a cold place at -225C; its orbit of nearly 250 Earth years is much more elliptical and significantly out of plane than any of the other planets with a diameter of just 1,500KM and furthest from the Sun at nearly 6 billion kilometers. Pluto’s moon, Charon, is nearly half its size so it could equally be described as more or less a companion planet. The only other company in that region of the Solar System is The Kuiper Belt, home to many of the Comets. Pluto is also losing its atmosphere to space, when in the closer part of its orbit to the Sun, more akin to a Comet than a planet. The Oort Cloud also home to innumerable Comets, marks the outer boundary of our Solar System and the beginning of Inter Stellar Space. The beginning of the end for Pluto began with the question being asked whether or not there were larger objects than Pluto out there. In 2003 Eris was found at 1.3 times the size of Pluto and 3 times further from the Sun. In 2006 rules were for the first time to be set down as to the definition of a planet. Pluto gets demoted to Dwarf Planet as part of a group of 5 of them. This outraged many of the public with protests around the globe. The technicality for its demotion being it was not large enough to clear its own debris field, vis-à-vis its neighbouring Comets. The New Horizons space probe launched in 2006 is not due to reach Pluto until 2015. This is when it’s closest to Earth, miss the opportunity and we need to wait another 250 years to try again, somewhat akin to the Voyager launch timing sequence. When New Horizons reaches Pluto its signals will take 4 hours to reach Earth.

46. The image shown here of Pluto is an interpretation as we’ve never been close enough to get a real one. The Pluto story has a great ending, the man who discovered it in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, now deceased, has part of his ash remains travelling with The New Horizons probe. He, posthumously, will have travelled further into Space than anyone to now and likely centuries to come, compensation indeed for demoting his planet. New Horizons will not land on Pluto but flyby, taking Clyde on an eternal journey out through the galaxy. Pluto – Now departed – (45 minutes) View Video

48. Mars Curiosity Mission - Mars Ever since H G Wells wrote his book ‘War of the Worlds’ in 1897 firing the public imagination as to life on Mars it’s held enormous fascination. A young Orson Well broadcast a radio version of the book in 1938 which panicked the America public, thinking an invasion had actually occurred, well worth watching, albeit a little of topic. Orson Wells – War of the Worlds – (60 minutes) View Video The strange features almost looking like canals on the surface, had for many generations, people thinking there could well have once been life on Mars. As a minimum, with its still remaining ice caps and what looked like river beds, that the planet had flowing water in sufficient supply to support some basic form of life.

50. The Curiosity Rover When The Viking probe landed, its location was fixed and chosen with safety as a priority, not the local geology. Curiosity, launched 2011, could be landed safely but being mobile could set off to explore the more interesting geology. Here a land rover named, Curiosity, is landed on the planet and must be placed there undamaged using a space crane to drop it the final 20 metres to the surface, a method which took years to perfect and had never been used before. Its mission is to discover if Mars could ever have supported life, we know, not now but maybe millions of year’s age? It’s the most advanced and largest moving vehicle ever sent into space. It cannot be landed like the lunar rovers sent to the Moon were. The moon has no atmosphere, Mars does and it’s unpredictable in nature. The weather varies making the atmosphere more or less dense affecting entry velocities. The space craft carrying Curiosity will arrive at 20,000KM/H burning a hole in the atmosphere 100KM long, only after slowing down to 3,000KM/H a parachute deploys to slow further to