intro to astronomy—-db12—-at least 250 words
Writing Your Response:
Current Events Conversations” are slightly less formal than your Group Debates. Students still need to use proper grammar and writing techniques. Responses should be complete, well thought out, and presented in a logical manner.
A minimum of one paragraph is required for this initial posting.
You are not required to support your post with references, but you are encouraged to include images, graphics, links to videos, and so on to create a more dynamic submission.
Your initial post should be submitted by Wednesday of this session and response comments posted by the session deadline.
Topic of Conversation:
Your personal program for space research of Jovian planets.
After reading chapter 11 of the e-textbook, you can make your personal judgment how important is different kind of information retrieved from space for different purposes about Jovian planets, including measurements of magnetic fields, multispectral images and video-records .
Jupiter is a very attractive planet for research. It is well-known as “failed star” since consists of most elements of Sun but doesn’t not possess an enough high energy to become a star. Its very strong magnetosphere plays some safety role of umbrella against the solar wind. The asteroids belt formed due to Jupiter’s gravity between Jupiter and Mars is the source of meteorites “falling” to the Earth and asteroids sometimes approaching to our orbit very close (last one -September 13, 2014). Jupiter also has redirected comets coming from Oort Cloud and Kuiper belt that inclined after close gravitational collision. All these factors are important for exploring as well as its atmospheric vertical stratification (stratosphere, magnetosphere, thermosphere) with clouds containing water and methane – greenhouse gases that very similar to the Earth’s atmospheric structure. There is an interesting fact for research that its moons possess magnetic poles and volcanic activity, particularly Io, unlike the small terrestrial planets.
Titan being the moon of Saturn attracts the interest because of the similarity of its surface geology to the Earth’s one as well as due to the presence of organic molecules and greenhouse warming effect. Its seasonal surveying was conducted according to Cassini mission. Pluto is also the interesting subject of research since scientists don’t have now enough data to classify it for sure and some of them treat it now as a comet. Space research of Pluto, Uranus and Neptune is planned to continue according to mission of New Horizon.
The NASA program includes the exploration of Jovan planets in the missions scheduled for a long period. NASA-Solar System Exploration
My description of planets justifying the necessity of their exploration is only a draft based on my personal viewpoint.
1. Being acquainted with the information of Chapter 11, list in order of your preferences all Jovian planets and their features you consider to be most important to measure and retrieve during this exploration.
2. Design your own program of exploration, choosing your prefered problems to resolve listed in order of the priority of their goals, vital importance, practical needs, theoretical significance, and expences , e.g. 1st is the exploration of Jupiter, required most expenditure, that is related to Asteroids belt – source of meteorites, 2nd is Titan related to the unique information of life sources and greenhouse effect in the outer solar system, 3rd is Pluto, Neptune and Uranus as the information sources of solar nebula- origin of our system and process of its forming
3. Why and how is important to include the exploration of orbital resonance and tidal heating in your program?
4. If your program is invested by commercial and governmental organizations, in what proportion (percentage) should they participate in your project ? Explain
5. If you have limited resources for performing your full program, are you ready to exclude the long mission program (kind of that usingVoyager1,2) covering travels beyond our solar system into interstellar space, or opposite – make a choose to sacrifice one part of your program (what part?) in favor of interstellar research with hope for meeting with other civilizations in cosmos. Look also at http://www.space.com/17201-voyager-2-nasa-longest-mission.html