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= The Search for Life on Mars =

From Big Bang to Galaxies
The universe is said to have begun in a space smaller than a nucleus and very hot. Within seconds it expanded and particles of matter were created, the expansion of the universe is known as the // Big Bang //. These particles are what made up the universe and these include antiquarks, energy and quarks. The temperature of the universe fell as its growth started to take a steady pace. Protons and neutrons moved through the universe colliding to cause energy to be formed. As the time goes by eventually helium nucleus are formed because of the attraction between protons and neutrons, over the next three hundred thousand years the temperature gets down to three thousand kelvin which allows atoms to be formed. The formation of helium and hydrogen atoms allows radiation to travel further and fog to disappear. // Galaxies // begin to be created about 2 billion years after the Big Bang. At the unevenness of matter gravity causes clumps to get denser. Galaxies are concentrated into shells and strings in voids. The central bulge of the galaxy is surrounded by a halo these galaxies are then classified by their size.

The Milky Way Galaxy
The Milky Way can be seen arching across the sky because of light emitted by many individual stars. The Milky Way is surrounded by a flat disk of stars with a layer of gas and dust in the center. The center of the disk has its center bulge. Inside of the disk is the sun and on the other side of the disk a small galaxy is being made within this huge one. The disk of the galaxy includes four arms made know by a bluish color which is light emitted by young stars. These arms come from the center bulge and have a spiral motion. The central bulge has many old stars which are closer than the stars on the suns side of the galaxy. The center of the center bulge is said to be a black cloud surrounded by gases. The arms have temporary matter connected to them. It is said that the galaxy is surrounded by an invisible corona which hold millions of stars, dust and gas because of its way of motion.

Lives of the Stars
Stars are known to form in cold, dark dust and gas clouds which inhabit interstellar space. Disturbances including exploding stars send waves or ripples through the clouds, as a result cores form. Gravity then pulls the cores back to together while the center of the core heats up causing protostar to be formed. The star is surrounded by cold dust but once the star heats up at the center and nuclear reaction starts and the dust becomes a disk. The gas is released from the poles of the star becomes settled allowing a time of very little change. All changes happened to a star depends on the mass of the star. The stars with the most mass are bluish-white, they have more mass and shine brighter than the sun. The color of the star depends on its surface temperature. The sun was formed the same way as a star, but the sun ran out of hydrogen in its core which was the source of its nuclear fuel; this happened over billions of years. After another few billion years the sun expands and becomes a darker orange and shines brighter than ever but eventually it sends off its material until becoming a dwarf star the same size of the earth.

The Sun
The sun is a star except much closer to the earth and it’s made up of hot gas. The power house of the sun is 15,000,000° at its core and is 20% denser than iron. The sun’s energy is formed when 4 million tons of hydrogen disappears every second. The energy then outwardly radiates from the core of the sun. The surface of the sun is hot gas bubbling outwardly to create granulation, while spicules are shot thousands of kilometers high from the surface of the sun. The particles radiating from the sun are pulled by the earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field is looped around the sun caused by its scarce rotation, where the looping occurs sun spots occur. The magnetic field will eventually break causing it to return back to normal.

History of the Solar System
The sun was at first created when gravity was able to pull interstellar dust and gas together. Once this happened the ball collapsed into a disk and its it center is the protosun. Inside of the disk solid material floating close by each other are able to collide and connect. The once larger items collided they would break apart. After a long period of time colliding four major planets were formed and then around these planets disks are formed and these disks hold moons. These major four planets were made in the area further from the sun while during this time planets could not be made in the space closer to the sun eventually four of the terrestrial planets were formed. These planets included the earth, moon and mars and these are the planets closer to the sun. The planets started off hot and heated down after a period of time. The moon is said to be created out of a collision between the earth and a planet the size of mars. Any other rocks left from collisions are a part of the asteroid circles. This is the history of the solar system.

=Exploring Space with the Hubble Deep Field Image=

====The Hubble Deep Field Academy helps explore galaxies in space using images produced by the Hubble telescope roaming space. During the orientation the astronomers asked about the classification of objects and whether or not they could all fit into a classification. While we asked about size, shape and color of the image. The astronomers estimate in the images was 3,000 different objects while my guess was 1,872 different objects. The astronomers guess for the amount of objects in the universe was 50 billion and mine was 56 billion which was a lot closer than my first guess. I believed this was because as we go out in the universe matter would be more scarce. There were many different types of classifications but three we used when classifying objects in our section and they were size, shape and color. When finding estimating the distance in space astronomers don't only use size but the light the object emits. The color of a galaxy indicates the age of the stars located in the arms. If the color is more bluish it is a young star, while if the color is red it is an older star. The process used to count the amount of objects in space is referred to as representative sampling, this takes place when the sky is divided into sections. The astronomers then chooses a section and counts all the objects in that section. The amount counted is then multiplied by the amount of sections the Universe is divided into. The Hubble Deep Field Academy was an informative way to learn about galaxies and space! ====



= Rocketry: The Early Years to the Modern Era =

====During the early year of rocketry there were no explorations to the moon but instead the idea of propulsion in one direction was used in different places. Around the time of 100 B.C. Hero of Alexandria (a Greek inventor) created a device that heated up water and sent it into a sphere. This object had two pipes sticking out of it and the angle in which the pipes had taken forced sphere to propel around. This brought the idea of propulsion which is a key idea apart of rocketry. The real idea of the rocket was brought around 1232 when the Chinese were at war with the Mongols. At first there were bamboo containers with gun powder and other substances in it. This was thrown into a fire and they would explode and flight everywhere. After being attached to sticks and used as fireworks, they were shown to be good devices in war as a scaring technique once attached to arrows. This is what is known as the first rockets and once this came about different countries experimented with the idea of rocketry.====

====At th e time of 1898, Konstantin (a Russian schoolteacher) made known the idea of exploration in space by using liquid propellants rockets. Known as the father of modern astronautics he stated that the speed and range were limited to the rocket because of exhaust velocity of escaping gases. Robert H. Goddard (an American) came early in the 20 th century and started with experiments using solid-propellant rockets because of interest in attaining higher altitudes by using practical rocketry experiments. After being discovering rockets would be propelled better by a liquid-fuel, he achieved the first flight though many difficulties. The rocket which flew a marvelous 12.5 meters was fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, you may thing this to be unimpressive by it was a very big achievement for rocketry during that time. The father of modern rocketry continued experiments after this grand achievement adding a flight control system (gyroscope system) to direct the rocket and a parachute for recovery. During World War Two the V-2 rocket was created by adding an explosive the element to destruction to an amazing innovation. The V-2 rocket could take out city blocks and almost won the war for the Germans. After the first satellite (Sputnik) was released into space after the world war and soon after the US launched the Explorer 1 satellite and then NASA was created by the USA. Rocketry has been explorer for many years as is very helpful in learning about the space around us. The first experiments tested have still impacted us now, now we are at the point where we are trying to settle on these planets around us. We have come far from the first launch of a liquid fueled rocket to a height of 12.5 meters. ====

[[image:ca-science7/explorer1tml.jpg caption="This is the design of the first satellite the US launched the Explorer 1"]]
= Labeled Model Rocket Parts =



=Rocket Experiment=

The results overall of the experiment using all of the rockets was all over the place there was no set pattern. The overall purpose of the experiment was to see how changing the mass of the rocket can change the altitude of the rocket. The method of doing this was by building eight rockets with the same directions and items and having each group painting them differently. When launching the rockets we found the altitude angle to be able to find the altitude by using trigonometry. The highest altitude flown was 91.6m and the lowest was 14.9m. The weigh for most of the rockets was around 46g and the highest flying rockets mass was weight was 45.9g. While ours with a mass 45.8 g only flew a height of 49.9m. Overall it is was very interesting watching the different flights. This was performed by building a rocket out of a kit and painting the rocket to what ever the group wanted to. Once we weighed the rockets we went outside and the weight we got was 45.8g. When we launched our rocket it went up moving on a diagonally backwards, once the parachute ejected we got the altitude angle so we could figure out our altitude. Thanks to the way we painted our rocket the parachute was able to eject and the nose cone was not painted shut which allowed our rocket to return in one piece. Our altitude angle was 26.5° and so our altitude using trigonometry was 49.9m. The construction of our rocket proved to be good because none of the fins fell off upon impact to the ground. To improve our flight we could try and us less paint and make sure the launch lug does not have any paint in it for it was a bit stuck on the launch pad. Also we could make sure we have enough recovery padding because the tip of our parachute was charged even it worked. Overall our flight went well and everything came back in one piece.



=Mars Rover Drop Design=

Our team designed our Mars Rover Drop using 2 cups, bubble wrap, string, pipe cleaners, 2 balloons, 2 rubber bands, a Ziploc bag, 2 sheets of paper, tape and paper towels. To hold the egg we wrapped bubble wrap around the sides and paper towels on the bottom of a cup. On another cup we cut off a part to make it smaller and did the exact same on the inside. On the sides of the bigger cup two holes were cut and the meter of string which was cut in half what tied onto it. The other end of each piece of string was tied to a blown up balloon. To each balloon the four ends of a sheet of paper was taped down. Then a Ziploc bag was cut long ways and a pipe cleaner was poked into each end. Two ends were sent through the holds on one paper and two on the other and they were tied in the middle to connect the balloons. Overall the egg flew well because it stayed intact. If we had more time or able to do this again, I would put more padding around the outside of the cups. Also I would not have spent so much time trying to make a structure underneath the cups. Overall it was fun seeing all of the different Mars Rover contraptions.



=Programming Rockets=

When making a left point turn the right wheel or motor is the only one moving either counter clockwise or clockwise. While the left motor is still or movig backwards and it is the same for a right point turn except reversed. When making a curve turn which is made by a lot of cars is basically te same thing as a point turn except the wheel that was not moving would just move slower than the one moving originally The Mindstorms software will give the motor electromagnetic energy to move in the way we tell it to. The amount of time taken to move forwards and backwards is measured in rotations. While turns are measured in degrees. To know how many times it rotated the robot has a tachometer inside of it to measure the numbers of rotations the motor has made. A problem with using the motors is depending on the surface it is moving on the turns may not be very accurate.

A device which takes natural energy and makes it electromagnetic energy for the robot are sensors. The sensors we used for our robot included the light, sound, touch and ultrasonic sensors. The sound sensor detected sound and acted upon it. The sensor measured the amount of sound pressure or decibels. The sound gave the sensors electromagnetic energy to convert into electromagnetic energy that the motors could understand. The light sensor allows the robot to tell the difference between light and dark. This allows the robot to be able to follow lines or any surface that is either dark or light for that matter. The ultrasonic sensor detects objects in front of the robot or in other words allows it to see. Sending out a signal that when reaches and object, it will bounce back allowing the object to know when to avoid it. The robot can avoid by turning stopping or even moving backwards. The touch sensor allows the robot to know when it has touched, or released an object. The robot can tell this because there is a spring inside of the sensor and behind of it there is a crystal which once crushed will press back to return to its original form. The is then sends out the electromagnetic energy that the robot needs.





= Curiosity: The Rover That Can Do Everything A Geologist Does =

Geologist go to desolate places where ancients rocks might be found to discover minerals. These places could be in canyons or on walls of dried up rivers. Geologist use compasses, rock hammers and hand lens when looking at rocks. Also acid test like the one we did in class using Hydrochloric Acid are common. These help geologist discover what rocks are made of. The geologist also have layers much like the Mars Rover which is shot in places that they can't reach. The rock then reflects a light back and based on that a chemical composition can be thought of. Geologist may also use streak test like the one we did in class to tell the different between two different rocks. Besides the test we talked about, we also used lust, color, hardness, magnetism, light refraction and taste to identify other minerals. We used also of Hematite because it has been found on Mars, interestingly it is also only found in places where flowing water exists.



The Mars Rover is able to analyze rocks by doing what geologist do on earth. The rover has a very good asset of being able to move around. This is good because of all of the hard to reach places they are going to need to investigate on Mars. This will allow geologist to learn about the early evolution of mars. Once the rover goes up to a rock, it can drill a hole into it. The powder which falls out will then be split into two tubes for the rover. These will tell of the rocks mineralogy and organic molecules that may be in the rock. The rover is so big (about the size of a car) that is able to carry many instruments needed when analyzing the rocks.



= Characteristics of Life Forms =

There are eight characteristics needed to identify the signs are life. Cells are the fundamental units of living things, there are animal, plant and bacteria cells. Cells are organize; tissues, organs, organ systems and organisms, they also have parts called organelles. Also all living things need materials like water, minerals and air and they take this from the environment surrounding them. All living things are homeostatic which means they are internally living things stay about the dame despite environment changes. They also respond to stimuli and the response can either be positive or negative making the person either move towards or away from the stimulus. Also all living things grow and move through a certain cycle- embryo, newborn, child, adolescent and adult. Also they all are able to adapt or make modifications that make an organism suited to its way of life. They also go through trough evolution which is when the characteristics of the life goes through changes over time. Finally they have to releas e chemical bonds of sugars which is energy stored.

There are different instruments used to discover life on different planet and in the paragraph a few will be discussed. Two probes Vikings 1 and 2 were sent to Mars with three experiments that are designed for that specific task. One of these being the LR experiment, which is used to find life forms that can release radioactive carbon dioxide/ methane gas. Or have life forms that can be able to metabolize the nutrients. It does this by scoping the soil up and mixing it together with water that contains nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. Besides these the probe performed controlled experiments. Some of these included heating the soil and isolating it in desolate places. These would call on organs needed for survival called photosynthetic organisms. When these experiments were performed the LR experiments came positives but unfortunately the controlled experiments didn't. There is one telescope called the ATLAST (Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope) made to discover life on planets that orbit other stars. The director of the program thinks that the ATLAST can search life else where in our galaxy and this will revolutionize the 21st century.