Jessica+J

__//**THE SEARCH FOR LIFE ON MARS**//__ __//**by Jessica J**//__  __//**From the Big Bang to Galaxies**//__ The Big Bang caused all sorts of changes, and changed the universe in many different ways. The Big Bang cause the temperature of the universe to go way down over the course of just 3 minutes. matter and antimatter particles were created and annihilated each other over the course of 1 second. Also, lots of radiant energy was created from the Big Bang and from annihilation of matter and antimatter particles. Within a tenth of a second, protons, neutrons, and antiprotons formed and annihilated each other, creating more energy. After a while (300,000 years), atoms of hydrogen and helium started forming. Spheres of gas began to form as well. Then, globular clusters formed around the spheres of gas. This is the halo of a galaxy. After the halo was formed, the sphere of gas began spiraling an turned into a galaxy. Our galaxy was formed this way. Sometimes galaxies would merge and become bigger galaxies. This may happen to our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy someday in the distant future. __**// The Milky Way Galaxy //**__  The galaxy holds mysteries that we have not yet figured out. The galaxy, looked at from the edge, is a disk with a central bulge, and a line of gas and dust cutting across the center. Looking from the top, the galaxy is a central circle with four rotating arms that are made up of solar systems, gas, dust, and other things. In the very center of the galaxy is the nucleus of the galaxy. We are not sure, but we think it is a massive black hole surrounded by clouds of gas and dust. There is also a form of matter called dark matter, that pushes and pulls on everything we see. Because of dark matter, the galaxy may actually be 5x bigger than it appears. No one knows what dark matter is, but it definitely pushes and pulls on everything in some way. __**// Our Solar System //**__ The Solar System was lucky to have survived its own creation. In the beginning, the sun was formed by gravity pulling together interstellar remnants and gas and dust, just like other stars. Planetecimals were getting larger, and nearer to the sun, they were hotter and only made of rock and metal, no ice, which is to be expected. Almost all of the planetecimals were destroyed from collisions that were too fast. However, some survived. At first, in the outer Solar System, the giants planets were formed, which were Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Then, although the planetecimals were quite smaller, towards the warmer area of the Solar System, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars formed. They all got their atmosphere later than the giant planets. The leading theory for the formation of our moon is that towards the start of our planet's existence, a catastrophic collision broke off part of the earth and that piece started orbiting the earth. Earth was lucky to not have gotten more than half of it taken off. There are other theories, but that one is the leading one. Once every planet had cooled, the Solar System had begun. __**// The Life of Stars //**__ The life of stars is determined by their mass. Following the track of a star similar to the sun, it starts as a cloud of interstellar dust, then a shockwave or blast wave from and exploding star makes the dust start to form clumps with cores. One of the cores begins to rotate, and it has and area around it that is free from gas, but just outside this area, a huge cloud of gas and dust swirls around the rotating proto star. Then the proto star flings away its force field with no gas, and it settles into a period of no change. Towards the end of its life, it begins to expand and change from yellow to orange. Then, after a while of expansion, it flings out some of its material, and it shrinks. For a while, the star pulses in and out, getting super red and then turning back to yellow as it loses size, and this usually for a few months. For this time it is very unstable. Then, after it is done pulsing, it blows off huge amounts of its material, and it shrinks to nearly half its original mass. Then the last layer of the inner core is blown off in a planetary nebula, and the sun becomes a dwarf star, which then gradually fades away.

A giant blue star is close to the same. However, when it is created, it goes through a huge amount of change before settling into an unchanging period of its life. When it dies, it only pulses for a month or so, and when it expands it turns yellow. Then it expands to become a red super giant, which is 1000x larger than the sun. Soon, a core of iron forms in the center, and at a critical moment, the core collapses from 1000 km across to 50 km across. Part of the imploding iron core sends out a shockwave that blows the star apart, creating a supernova explosion.

ROCKETRY When rocketry was first started, it might have been an accident. It is possible that tubes filled with gunpowder that the Chinese used to create explosions by throwing in the fire during festivals may have not exploded, but instead skittered out of the fire and up into the air. By the 1200s, the purposes of "rockets" which, at that point, were tubes with gunpowder, were either for fireworks or warfare, such as when the Chinese won a war against the Mongols. In 1898, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed the idea that humans could explore space using rockets, and also that, with liquid propellants, rockets could achieve a greater range. In the early 20th century, an American named Robert H. Goddard started experimenting. He was working on solid fuels to measure the exhaust velocities of the burning gases in rockets, when he became convinced that rockets would go farther and higher with liquid fuel. He experimented with liquid fuels until finally, on March 16th, 1926, he achieved the first successful rocket flight with liquid fuels. It seems insignificant compared to things such as flying to the moon, but Goddard's achievement was the forerunner of rocket flight into space. On October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union lost Sputnik I into space. This was the start of space travel. Soon after, Americans sent of Explorer I and we were able to predict our weather and have instant communications and all the things we have today. We also went to the mon several years later and sent rovers to mars. The first dog sent into space, Laika, survived seven days before she was put to sleep. People are still trying to reach an agreement on how to do certain things in rocketry, but one thing is for certain. Rocketry has opened up the secrets of the universe to mankind. ROCKET STAGES media type="custom" key="13889856"

Exploration of Mars

Over the last 40 years, there have been many space missions with the goal of exploring Mars, Three of these missions include the Mariner 4 mission, the Viking I mission, and the Pathfinder mission. Mariner 4 was the fourth spacecraft launched on November 28, 1964, that was intended to explore the planets and, in flyby mode, it performed the first successful flyby of Mars. Mariner 4 gave the first pictures of the surface of Mars back to Earth. Viking I was the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. Viking I was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and complete its mission. Until May 9th, 2010, Viking I held the record for longest Mars surface mission. The mission lasted 6 years 116 days, Earth time. Pathfinder was a U.S. rover that sent a base station with a roving probe out to the surface of Mars, It landed on Mars on July 4th, 1997. Pathfinder consisted of a lander with a small, 23 pound rover called Sojourner. Sojourner was the first robot ever to operate on the surface of Mars.

 __//**Sojourner Rover on Mars**//__

__//**My Rocket**//__

 __//**"The Star"**//__

MODEL ROCKET EXPERIMENT The purpose of this experiment was to figure out if the mass of a model rocket affected the height that it flew. The experiment was performed by creating 10 model rockets that are were exactly the same. Then, the rockets were painted, and this made some rockets more massive than the others. The rockets were then launched, and the angles were determined from 100 m away from the launch site. The angles were then used to determine how high the rockets flew using trigonometry. This would prove some hypothesis true, and some false. The results of this experiment were very erratic. The heaviest did fly the highest. However, the 2nd heaviest did not fly the highest, but the 6th highest. And the lightest rocket flew higher than the 4th heaviest rocket. Therefore, my hypothesis was incorrect, because I believed that lighter rockets would fly higher, but the flights were very different and did not follow a pattern, let alone the pattern of my hypothesis. Our rocket did not have any paint over the launch lug, so it launched just fine, and then it went straight up with no spiraling. When the parachute came out from the rocket, the shock cord came off of the rocket and the rocket came spinning and crashing to the ground, where one of the fins broke off. The nose cone, however, stayed attached to the parachute, and floated gently to the ground. The rocket flew 54.3 m into the air before the parachute came out. ROCKET FIN EXPERIMENT

The purpose of this experiment was to find how the amount and placement of fins affects how high a model rocket will fly. The control of the experiment was model rockets launched with 3 fins. The independent variable of this experiment was the number of fins and the mass of the rockets. The dependent variable of this experiment was the maximum altitude of the model rockets when launched. In both graphs, there was little or no relationship or pattern.





Our rocket had 6 fins. It flew into the air without a hitch, and it went 48.8 m into the air before the parachute came out. However, our parachute failed to come out all the way, so then the whole rocket went spiraling to the ground. When Katherine and I went to collect the rocket, we found that the body tube had been severely bent and slightly crushed, although the rest of the rocket was fine, along with the fins, which were all still attached.

Robotics History Robotic history started out in 350 BC, with the Greek mathematician, Archytas, building a mechanical bird propelled by steam. It was one of history's earliest studies of flight.

Throughout robotic history, there have been many great and notable achievements, such as when the word Robot was first used by Czech writer Karel Capek in 1921, and when George Devol patented a playback device for controlling machines in 1946. These were always considered the greatest achievements of their time, only to be replaced by other, greater achievements. The achievements were considered great because the people needed certain things at the time, or at least wanted them, and inventors accepted the challenge. An example of this is when, in 1956, Alan Newell and Herbert Simon created the Logic Theorist. This was a robot capable of solving complicated math problems.

1977 was the start of the USA's career in launching space explorers. This was the year that Voyager I and II were launched deep into space from the Kennedy Space Flight Center. However, before Robots continued down the path to space, in 1992, Dr. John Adler came up with the CyberKnife, a robot that would scan a patient for tumors and then, when it spotted a tumor, it would cut out the tumor. The CyberKnife was cleared for use in August of 2001.

Now robots continued down the space path. In 1997, the Pathfinder Mission landed on Mars, releasing Sojourner, the Mars Rover, to transmit data about the red planet back to Earth. It started roving in July of 1997, and continued transmitting until September. Also, in 2003, NASA launched Spirit and Opportunity off towards Mars. Spirit landed on January 3rd and Opportunity landed on January 23rd. While many more things have happened between then and now, those events were considered the greatest developments of their time.

ROBOT PROGRAMMING media type="file" key="JAJ drive in square.AVI" width="300" height="300"

Robot motors can be programmed a few different ways. These ways are to go forward, to go backward, to go right, to go left, to point turn, and to curve turn. The robot goes forward by you programming the motors to both work the same way at the same time. It is the same for backward, they just thrust the opposite direction. In order to go right, they have to back up while the right motor goes, and then they will be facing right and then they go forward. It is the same for left, only the left motor is going while the robot backs up. In order to point turn, the robot has to first stop. Then, one of the motors starts while the other stays of. This causes it to stay in one place and turn. In order to curve turn, the robot must still be moving, and one of the motors has to be going faster than the other, therefore going right or left depending on the faster motor.

Geology of Mars

There are many ways minerals can be identified. Some of these ways are luster, color, taste, feel, or other physical properties. Minerals can also be identified by mixing them with acids to figure out whether they are a carbonate compound or something else. Another useful thing is testing whether or not the mineral is magnetic. Since very few minerals have the property of magnetism, if the mineral is magnetic, that significantly narrows down the choices of which mineral it is. Some minerals will make things like text in a book look different. For instance, when you put the mineral calcite on top of text in a book, it seems like you have double vision! Due to the amount of ways to identify minerals, it is very likely that we will be able to identify any minerals found on Mars.

Curiosity has to be like a geologist and identify minerals to see if Mars ever had life. It drills into the earth and powder flies out. Some of the powder goes back into the rover. The rover then analyzes the minerals to find out if there are any organic molecules on them. It carries a full laboratory with it in order to do this, just like geologists on earth. When it can't touch certain things, it will shoot a laser at the minerals and rocks and look at the light reflected back to it. This helps identify the luster of the mineral and, therefore, the mineral. If all goes well, Curiosity will show us that there is, or was, life on Mars.



Characteristics of Life

There are eight characteristics that an organism must have to be living. The first of these eight is that all living things must be made of cells. Cells are the fundamental units of living things, and have many parts, called organelles. The cells of plants are different from those of animals and also of bacteria cells. The second characteristic all living things must have is they all need materials. All living things need water, air, and minerals to survive, and they take these things from the environment. The third characteristic of a living thing is that all living things try to be homeostatic. This means that internally, living things stay about the same despite environment changes. Living things expend a ton of energy to stay in homeostasis. The fourth characteristic of a living thing is all living things respond to stimuli. This means that when something happens, a living thing reacts. This is a response. There are two types of responses; positive and negative. A positive response is where the living thing moves towards the stimulus, whereas a negative reaction is the exact opposite, where the living thing moves away from the stimulus. The fifth characteristic of a living thing is that all living things must reproduce at some point in their lives. There are two types of reproduction; sexual and asexual. Sexual reproduction involves two parents whereas asexual reproduction involves only one parent. The sixth characteristic of a living thing is that all living things grow. This means they must develop from a lower or simpler form to a higher or more complex form. Also, not all things grow at the same rate or are the same size when they finish growing. The seventh characteristic of a living thing is that all living things are adapted. Adaptation is when an organism is suited to their way of life. Evolution is the process of living things changing certain characteristics over time. The eighth characteristic of life is that all living things must respire. Respiration is when a living thing breaks down food to make energy. Consumers must take in food to sustain life, whereas producers create their own food.



There are several different ways to find out whether or not there is life on Mars. One of these ways is called Labeled Release apparatus. It works by scooping up a little bit of Martian soil and adding a drop of water containing nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. If the soil contains microbes, the life-forms would metabolize the nutrients and either release radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas. This could be measured by the radiation detector on the probe. Of course, in order to really tell if there was life, control experiments had to be performed. In the case of the Viking probe, control experiment had to come back negative for life and the Martian soil positive in order for them to know that sample contained life. The first sample came back positive, and the biologists were thrilled. However, the other two samples came back negative, so the biologists dismissed the possibility of life on Mars.