Space Project Use Textbook Pages 640-641 and your planning pages BEFORE you start on your booklet! Front Cover - Name, Title, Period Pages 1-2 - Location #1, details, and picture Pages 3-4 - Location #2, details, and picture Pages 5-6 - Location #3, details, and picture Back Cover - The end of the story Use your notebook, textbook, or the internet to find other interesting places in space! *NASA pic of the day! Orion Nebula Ever since human beings turned their attention to the heavens they have been aware of the Orion Nebula, a celestial feature situated at the south of Orion’s Belt that is visible to the naked eye. The ancient Mayan culture of Central America had a folk tale that explained this smudgy star-filled part of the night sky. The Hubble Space Telescope captured this wonderful image of the nebula in 2006, offering humanity the most detailed glimpse of Orion yet. Eskimo Nebula British astronomer William Herschel discovered this nebula in 1787, and it was subsequently named the Eskimo Nebula since its unusual double-shell formation resembles a person’s face inside the padded hood of a winter jacket. The star at the centre is similar to our own Sun, and the strange orange streaks seen in the outer part of the formation stretch for a light-year in all directions. Valles Marineris, Mars This image, a collaged mosaic of 102 photographs taken by the Viking 1 Orbiter in 1980, shows Mars and the vast Valles Marineris that cut a deep gash through the planet’s equator. The system of canyons is 4,000 kilometres in length, 200 kilometres wide, 8 kilometres deep at its lowest points, and as such is the biggest known canyon in the solar system. Carina Nebula These ethereal clouds of matter are found in the Carina Nebula, a bright formation that envelops several clusters of stars. Although it is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the night sky, it is far less well known and observed than more famous formations such as Orion due to its position deep in the Southern Hemisphere. The Carina Nebula is located in part of our own galaxy, approximately 6,500 to 10,000 light-years from the Earth. Pillars of Creation This image, entitled ‘The Pillars of Creation’ is one of the most famous photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope, and shows vast interstellar clouds. The picture captures a portion of the Eagle Nebula, and what we are seeing is actually the creation of new stars in this ‘young’ nebula. Butterfly Nebula This mind-blowing photograph, taken from the Hubble Telescope, shows the death throes of a star, exploding with two gargantuan lobes of hot gas and debris. The dying star would have once have been fives times the size of our Sun, and the resulting explosion has created one of the hottest places in the galaxy at just under 20,000 degrees Celsius. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Before Voyager 1 left the inner solar system and photographed the Pale Blue Dot, the spacecraft’s primary mission was to photograph Saturn, Jupiter and the two planets’ moons. This image was taken on February 25th, 1979, and shows the swirling drama of an anticyclonic storm on Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, the planet’s famous Great Red Spot. About 4 billion years ago, the inner solar system was being cleared of the remaining debris left over from its formation. During this period, which is called the Late Heavy Bombardment, a large asteroid like those that created the “seas” on the Moon crashed into the planet Mercury and formed the Caloris Basin, one of the largest such features in the solar system with a diameter of 1,550 km (960 miles). The interior of the basin is filled with high ridges and deep fractures that radiate outward from the center. The basin is surrounded by Mercury’s highest mountains, towering 3 km (2 miles) above the plains and many lava vents, which point to a period of active volcanism. Bring your sunscreen; you’ll catch about 7 times more rays than you do on Earth because you’re so much closer to the Sun. ● Apollo 11 landing site, Sea of Tranquility, Moon ● The solar system isn’t all stark craters and majestic vistas; humanity has scattered its artifacts among the planets and interplanetary space. If you had to choose one such historical site to visit, make it the Apollo 11 landing site at the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, where on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on another world. There you will see the lower part of the lunar module Eagle. But be careful where you step. Your footprints and those left by Armstrong and Aldrin will last for millions of years. ● ● Valles Marineris, Mars Arizona’s Grand Canyon is very impressive. It’s 450 km (280 miles) long and about 2 km (1 mile) deep. However, when set next to the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars, it is a mere ditch. Discovered in 1971 by Mariner 9 (for which it is named), Valles Marineris stretches 4,000 km (2,500 miles) across the planet. Typical canyons are 200 km (125 miles) across and have walls 2–5 km (1–3 miles) deep. The center of the canyon system is a depression 600 km (375 miles) across and 9 km (5.6 miles) deep. It has been speculated that Valles Marineris may be a fault system separating two continental plates. If so, Mars and Earth would be the only planets with surfaces shaped by plate tectonics. ●Olympus Mons, Mars ● Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system. It is 700 km (435 miles across and rises 22 km (14 miles) above the surrounding Tharsis plain. The edge of Olympus Mons is a cliff 10 km (6 miles) high. From there it is a shallow slope to the central craters, which are 85 km (53 miles) across. The largest such volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, is 120 km (75 miles) across and 9 km (6 miles) high, although much of it is hidden beneath the ocean floor. ● Io -Jupiter has four large moons, called the Galilean satellites because they were discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo in 1610. Because Io is the closest to Jupiter, tidal effects squeeze the moon like a rubber ball, heating the interior. This energy is released in spectacular volcanic eruptions of silicate lava. Io’s volcanoes were discovered by the American probe Voyager 1 in 1979, making the moon the first place beyond Earth where active volcanoes were observed. These eruptions are so numerous that Io is entirely resurfaced every few millennia. The surface is mottled in orange, white, and yellow hues from sulfur and sulfur compounds. Europa

The surface of Europa is made up of super-smooth solid water ice with a potentially massive liquid-water ocean beneath, kept from freezing up by tidal heating. It also has a thin atmosphere made up of oxygen, which unfortunately would probably be far too thin for humans to actually breathe.

Nonetheless, if there are extraterrestrial super-hard-core polar bears (or just some nifty alien microbes) hanging out anywhere within a light year of here, Europa might be the mostly likely spot to find them. The brightest moon of Saturn, Enceladus, has a smooth, almost featureless surface covered with ice. However, at the south pole is the tiger stripe region, several ridges from which gigantic geysers spew water thousands of kilometers out into space and form one of Saturn’s rings. The geysers likely come from an ocean of liquid water underneath the ice. Where there is water and energy, there may be life. Titan Saturn's weird moon, Titan, with its huge liquid methane lakes, storms, and even potential ice-spewing volcanoes is one of the more fascinating spots in the solar system. The small Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005 and sent back a few hours' worth of data, successfully pulling off the most distant landing of any sort in human history. Titan is almost too tempting a destination to resist for a future manned journey, but any such adventurous astronauts should be sure to give up smoking completely before landing anywhere near those flammable lakes. Io Like many spots along Earth's volcanically active "ring of fire," Jupiter's moon Io might not be the most hospitable locale, but it definitely seems worth a visit. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, ejecting plumes up to 190 miles above its surface at half of escape velocity. Imagine the volcanoes of Hawaii erupting with such force that they nearly send plumes of lava and ash into orbit. Scary and maybe not the safest place to visit, but can you imagine how many great shots you could get for your Instagram feed on that trip? Ceres and the asteroid belt So you entrepreneurial space nerd types want to talk about mining asteroids? Well, then, let's talk about the asteroid belt and its largest resident, Ceres. Lying just beyond Mars and certainly not the only asteroid belt in the solar system, this one is the granddaddy. Ceres is believed to make up as much as a third of the total mass of the objects in the asteroid belt. If anyone is really serious about exploiting these space rocks, this could be the place to set up shop. Ganymede How could we leave the solar system's largest moon off this bucket list? Jupiter's moon Ganymede is another of those distant satellites with a thin oxygen atmosphere and icy surface, but it's also home to some of the most complex geology observed so far beyond our own planet. So much so that it led researchers to create a geologic map of the entire sphere. Unmanned missions to Ganymede are already planned for the 2030s, so definitely add this one to the list of places our grandchildren might be interested in checking out. the Trifid Nebula certainly bares a resemblance to a unicorn.