VOLUME 18 ISSUE 4 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program A New Era in Space THOM BAUR/REUTERS ■ Post Reprint: “Five Myths About Space” ■ Post Opinion Reprint: “This is exactly the wrong time to retreat from space” ■ Post Opinion Reprint: “The mission to Mars is one stupid leap for mankind” ■ Student Activity: PRO-CON A Difference of Opinion ■ e-Replica: Explore e-Replica | Search and Monitor ■ Post Reprint: “Virgin Galactic craft crosses threshold of space” January 14, 2019 ©2019 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 18 ISSUE 5 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program Most agree that NASA should remain a viable U.S. agency. In October 1958 when it was established it “was built on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and other government organizations as the locus of U.S. civil aerospace research and development.” Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space was its first major program. Different Perspectives What now? Does NASA focus on the moon with a new Gateway or resumption of landings and lunar exploration? Does NASA continue to gather data on Mars and ready spacecraft for both unmanned and manned landings? Should it continue with space exploration like those accomplished by the Hubble telescope and New Horizons? In what ways will mankind and the blue planet benefit from the space explorations? Read and ponder the points of view. Debate and discuss. Which for you is the most fascinating and acceptable of the different perspectives? 2 January 14, 2019 ©2019 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 18 ISSUE 5 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program Myths About Space ● Originally Published on Dec. 11, 2018 (or sometimes not so gracefully) BY LUCIANNE WALKOWICZ flipping and floating around, hair Space is literally all around us, and aloft, like swimmers in a starry sea. it’s notoriously difficult to wrap our Lucianne Walkowicz is an This often leads people to conclude minds around it. Given the hundreds astronomer at the Adler that there’s no gravity up there. of billions of stars and planets that Planetarium, and the 5th Blumberg “Gravity is an important influence on make up our galaxy alone, who Chair in Astrobiology root growth, but the scientists found can be blamed for a lack of cosmic 5that their space plants didn’t need it to perspective, even if NASA’s InSight flourish,” National Geographic wrote explorer just landed on Mars to send in 2012 of botanical research aboard some back? As an astronomer at the space station. A 2018 headline in the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, I the Independent similarly described spend a lot of time talking with our a condition that affects astronauts visitors about their space questions, during “zero-gravity missions.” as well as debunking some persistent In fact, if there were no gravity misconceptions. These five crop up in space, it wouldn’t be possible for again and again. astronauts (or anything) to orbit the Earth. As Newton explained it, gravity MYTH NO. 1 is the mutual attraction between any There’s no gravity in space. objects that have mass. Here on Earth, Maybe you’ve seen those videos RANDY BRESNIK we experience gravity as our weight, NASA Astronaut Randy Bresnik shared a of weightless astronauts on the video showing the International Space Station which is to say the attraction between International Space Station, gracefully orbiting above the Sea of Japan on Nov. 29. our own mass and the Earth. When 3 January 14, 2019 ©2019 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 18 ISSUE 5 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program hard for astronomers to study, since most of our understanding of the universe relies on measuring light. What we do know is that the huge masses of black holes (anywhere from tens to millions of times the mass of our sun) bend space-time in extreme ways, which is why illustrations often make them look like deep cosmic funnels. If you get close enough to one, you will certainly experience its powerful gravitational force, which is why astronomers see stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. But WASHINGTON POST LIVE the gravitational tug is just like that The Washington Post hosted "Transformers: Space" on October 23, 2018. It featured Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the National Space Council, who answered questions about of any other object — dependent on a "Space Force." Also on the program were NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Bill Nye and mass, and distance — and it’s not astronauts Chris Ferguson and Victor Glover who discussed the future of human spaceflight. special just because it’s caused by a black hole. If I could magically a rocket is in space, the vehicle and MYTH NO. 2 replace our sun with a black hole the astronauts carried by it still feel Black holes suck. that had exactly the same mass as our the pull of the planet’s gravity. No News outlets tend to describe these sun, our Earth would keep orbiting matter where they are, they have gravity wells as if they were oversize exactly where it is now, and similarly, some gravitational relationship with cosmic vacuums. “Black Hole Sucks those stars at the center of our galaxy objects — from distant planets to Down Star Stuff at 30 Percent will spend their entire lifetimes faraway stars — however faint it Speed of Light,” proclaimed a recent happily orbiting, with no danger of might be. You, too, experience the Discover magazine headline. The getting sucked in. In that sense, black tug of the entire universe, even if the website Futurism offered a survival holes are more like sinkholes than tug that you notice is from Earth. guide for those who somehow “get vacuums: One sinkhole in Florida Back on the space station, sucked into a black hole.” And then isn’t going to destroy the whole astronauts (and the station itself) there’s Beavis and Butthead, who Earth, but best not to get too close. are slowly falling toward, or more warned us that a black hole “sucks up technically around, the Earth. The the whole universe, and then it’s like, MYTH NO. 3 astronauts look and feel weightless it grinds it up and sends it all to hell The sun is yellow. because they do not experience the or something.” Every child has reached for the Earth pushing back up on them as In truth, black holes are a bunch of yellow crayon or marker when it’s they would if they took a tumble on mass crunched together into a tiny time to draw the sun. This common terra firma. If you’ve ever been in volume, creating a huge gravitational perception leads to articles like an elevator that descends quickly, field. Where their gravitational field one in Sciworthy that begins, “The dropping from under your feet, is strongest, not even light, the fastest yellow sun in our sky provides the you’ve had a tiny taste of what they thing in the universe, can escape. As light and energy needed to sustain experience all the time. a result, black holes have long been our planet.” Pretty forgivable, given 4 January 14, 2019 ©2019 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 18 ISSUE 5 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program burn out before we showed up a few hundred thousand years ago.” In the case of our sun, however, “burning” is a total misnomer. There is no combustion, fed by oxygen, to release the energy stored in the fuel. Stars generate energy through fusion, smashing together atoms deep in their cores like gigantic particle colliders. These fusion reactions take lighter elements, such as hydrogen, and smash them together to build heavier elements (like helium). When hydrogen atoms fuse together, they release energy, which eventually makes it out of the heart of the star AP In this image taken from NASA Television, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft approaches the to shine into the universe. robotic arm for docking to the International Space Station, Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018. MYTH NO. 5 It would be hard to fly through the that even astronomers refer to the sun and scatters solar radiation before asteroid belt. as a “yellow dwarf.” And Superman it makes it to our eyes. Because To get past Mars, onward to famously gets his powers from his the higher-energy, bluer light gets Jupiter and beyond, one must pass proximity to “yellow stars.” scattered more, the light from the through the asteroid belt, a region Yet to understand the true color sun that reaches our eyes on Earth of space that harbors an especially of the sun, you have to know a little appears more yellow. But in space, large number of rocks. That sounds bit about light itself. Visible light, the sun would appear white to us. dangerous, at least to some science the kind that human eyes can see, is fans who write into sites like “Ask just a tiny fraction of the energies of MYTH NO. 4 an Astronomer.” Usually, people’s light in the universe. Mixed together, The sun is on fire. ideas about the asteroid belt come all this light appears white — but As it turns out, when you take the from scenes in sci-fi movies like The the colors of the rainbow, from red incredibly dynamic surface of the Empire Strikes Back, where Han Solo to violet, are different energies of sun, and colorize it in yellows and nimbly navigates the Millennium light that your eyes can see (red is at oranges, it looks a whole lot like fire.