Space Exploration

Höfundur: Sten Odenwald (Útgáfa: 0)
Space Exploration

Kaup valmöguleikar

A NASA science educator showcases important objects in space history from Galileo's telescope to the Curiosity rover: "Will fascinate readers of any age. " — Publishers Weekly (starred review) This book examines 100 objects that forever altered what we know and how we think about the cosmos. From an ancient Mayan codex to Sputnik to Skylab and into the twenty-first century, some objects are iconic and some obscure—but all are utterly important.

The  Nebra sky disk (1600 BCE) features the first realistic depiction of the sun, moon, and stars. The Lunar Laser Ranging RetroReflector  finally showed us how far we are from the moon in 1969. In 1986, it was the humble, rubber  O-ring that doomed the space shuttle  Challenger. The  Event Horizon Telescope gave us our first glimpse of a black hole in 2019. These 100 objects showcase the workhorse tools and game-changing technologies that have altered the course of space history—and the small steps and giant leaps we've made in our quest to explore the farthest reaches of the universe.

Nánar um bókina

Útgefandi
Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
ISBN
9781615196159
Print ISBN
9781615196142
Format
ePub
Útgáfa
0
Höfundar
Sten Odenwald
Tungumál
English
Útgefið
2019-11-01
Prent takmörkun á líftíma
100
Prent takmörkun
10
Afritunar takmörkun
10

Kaflar

  • Cover
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Foreword by John Mather
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Blombos Ochre Drawing: The first step to comprehending space
  • 2. The Abri Blanchard Bone Plaque: Ancient lunar phase calendar (30,000 BCE)
  • 3. The Egyptian Star Clock: The first steps toward quantifying the sky (2100 BCE)
  • 4. The Nebra Sky Disk: A pocket planetarium (1600 BCE)
  • 5. The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa: Modern astronomy’s foundational text (1500 BCE)
  • 6. The Star Charts of Senenmut: Drawing the sky in detail (1483 BCE)
  • 7. The Merkhet: Fusing astronomy and construction (1400 BCE)
  • 8. The Nimrud Lens: The first step toward modern telescopes (750 BCE)
  • 9. The Greek Armillary Sphere: The first celestial calculators (300 BCE)
  • 10. The Diopter: A landmark in charting accurate star positions (200 BCE)
  • 11. Antikythera Mechanism: A portable celestial calculator (200 BCE)
  • 12. Hipparchus’s Star Atlas: A foundational map of the heavens (129 BCE)
  • 13. The Astrolabe: Using the stars to track time (375 BCE)
  • 14. The Dunhuang Star Atlas: The first complete star chart (700 BCE)
  • 15. Al-Khwarizmi’s Algebra Textbook: Multiplying the power to calculate our universe (820 BCE)
  • 16. The Dresden Codex: A glimpse at Mayan precision astronomy (1200 to 1300)
  • 17. The Chaco Canyon Sun Dagger: An homage to celestial movement in spiral and light (1300)
  • 18. Giovanni de’ Dondi’s Astrarium: An astonishingly complex calculator from the late Middle Ages (1364)
  • 19. The Big Horn Medicine Wheel: An American Indian monument to the stars in Wyoming (1400)
  • 20. The Ensisheim Stone: Rocks from the sky (1492)
  • 21. De Revolutionibus: Copernicus changes the center of the universe (1564)
  • 22. Tycho’s Mural Quadrant: And his other tools of precision astronomy (1590)
  • 23. Galileo’s Telescope: The beginning of modern astronomy (1609)
  • 24. The Slide Rule: The proto-calculator technology of the 1960s space program (1622)
  • 25. The Eyepiece Micrometer: The most precise astronomical measurement yet (1630)
  • 26. The Clock Drive: A new way of seeing with telescopes (1674)
  • 27. The Meridian Circle: An ingenious device to help catalog the stars (ca. 1690)
  • 28. The Skidi Pawnee Star Chart: A relic of an American Indian tribe famed for celestial observation (1700)
  • 29. Smoked-Glass Sun Viewing: The original eclipse glasses, making celestial events accessible to the masses (1706)
  • 30. The Gyroscope: An ingenious device for keeping rockets flying straight and true (1743)
  • 31. The Electric Battery: Keeping spacecraft running (1748)
  • 32. Pilâtre de Rozier and d’Arlandes’s Balloon: First flight (1783)
  • 33. William Herschel’s Forty-Foot Telescope: The largest scientific tool of its day (1785)
  • 34. The Spectroscope: Discovering what the stars are made of (1814)
  • 35. The Daguerreotype Camera: The advent of astronomical photography (1839)
  • 36. The Solar Panel: Fuel for spacecraft (1839)
  • 37. The Leviathan of Parsonstown: The last telescope of its kind (1845)
  • 38. Crookes Tube: Detecting and measuring nuclear particles (1869)
  • 39. The Triode Vacuum Tube: The birth of electronics (1906)
  • 40. The Ion Rocket Engine: Game-changing propulsion (1906)
  • 41. The Hooker Telescope: The most famous telescope (1917)
  • 42. Robert Goddard’s Rocket: The first use of liquid rocket fuel (March 16, 1926)
  • 43. The Van de Graaff Generator: The dawn of atom-smashing technology (1929)
  • 44. The Coronagraph: Eclipses on demand (1931)
  • 45. Jansky’s Merry-Go-Round Radio Telescope: The birth of radio astronomy (1932)
  • 46. The V-2 Rocket: The first artificial object in space (1942)
  • 47. ENIAC: The first modern computer (1943)
  • 48. Colossus Mark 2: First programmable computer (1944)
  • 49. The Radio Interferometer: A powerful breakthrough in searching the cosmos (1946)
  • 50. The Heat Shield: Returning payloads safely back to Earth (1948)
  • 51. The Integrated Circuit: Paving the way for spacecraft-ready computing power (1949)
  • 52. The Atomic Clock: Using time to measure space (1949)
  • 53. Space Fasteners: The unsung technology holding space exploration together (1950)
  • 54. The Hydrogen Line Radio Telescope: Mapping the interstellar medium (1951)
  • 55. The X-Ray Imaging Telescope: A new window onto the universe (1952)
  • 56. The Hydrogen Bomb: A destructive demonstration of how stars shine (1952)
  • 57. The Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator: Electricity when the sun doesn’t shine (1954)
  • 58. The Nuclear Rocket Engine: Now we’re getting somewhere! (1955)
  • 59. Sputnik: Russians win the space race . . . for a few months (1957)
  • 60. Vanguard 1: The oldest space junk (1958)
  • 61. Luna 3: Our first glimpse of the Moon’s far side (1959)
  • 62. The Endless Loop Magnetic Tape Recorder: Data storage in space (1959)
  • 63. The Laser: A new light and way of seeing (1960)
  • 64. Space Food: Cuisine for the Space Age (1961)
  • 65. The Space Suit: A life-supporting second skin (1962)
  • 66. Syncom 2 (and 3): Making space commercially accessible (1963)
  • 67. The Vidicon Camera: Electronically imaging objects in space (1964)
  • 68. The Space Blanket: A simple way to keep heat in—and out (1964)
  • 69. The Handheld Maneuvering Unit: Getting around in space (1965)
  • 70. Apollo 1 Block I Hatch: A grim wake-up call to the perils of space travel (1967)
  • 71. The Interface Message Processor: The beginning of the World Wide Web (1967)
  • 72. The Hasselblad Camera: The first selfies in space (1968)
  • 73. Apollo 11 Moon Rocks: The first systematic geological samples from another world (1969)
  • 74. The CCD Imager: Filmless imaging of planets, stars, and galaxies (1969)
  • 75. The Lunar Laser Ranging RetroReflector: Measuring the Earth–Moon distance with lasers (1969)
  • 76. The Apollo Lunar Television Camera: The iconic image of Neil Armstrong’s first, small step (1969)
  • 77. The Homestake Gold Mine Neutrino Detector: The first neutrino detector (1970)
  • 78. Lunokhod 1: The first robot to visit another world (1970)
  • 79. The Skylab Exercise Bike: Humans learn how to stay fit in space (1973)
  • 80. The Laser Geodynamics Satellite (LAGEOS): Discovering the true shape of Earth (1976)
  • 81. Smoot’s Differential Microwave Radiometer: Big Bang cosmology confirmed (1976)
  • 82. The Viking Remote- Controlled Sampling Arm: Robotic manipulation of another planet’s surface (1976)
  • 83. The “Rubber Mirror”: Advent of adaptive optics, a better way for telescopes to see (1977)
  • 84. The Multi-Fiber Spectrograph: Studying galaxies a hundred at a time (1978)
  • 85. The Venera Landers: Exploring the surface of Venus (1981)
  • 86. The Compromised Challenger O-Rings: A humble sealant causes a historic disaster (1986)
  • 87. COSTAR: Giving the Hubble Space Telescope the gift of sight (1993)
  • 88. CMOS Sensors: High-precision astronomical imaging (1995)
  • 89. The Allan Hills Meteorite: The search for aliens gets serious (1996)
  • 90. Sojourner: Robotic exploration of Mars begins (1997)
  • 91. Gravity Probe B: Testing general relativity (2004)
  • 92. LIDAR: Automated docking maneuvers removing humans from the equation (2007)
  • 93. The Large Hadron Collider: The most complex machine ever built (2008)
  • 94. The Kepler Space Telescope: World’s largest digital camera in space (2009)
  • 95. Curiosity Rover: An astonishing robotic space explorer (2012)
  • 96. Mangalyaan—the Mars Orbiter Mission: India joins Club Mars—at a discount (November 2013)
  • 97. A 3-D Printed Ratchet Wrench: Print what you need, when you need it, in space (2014)
  • 98. The LIGO Gravitational-Wave Interferometer: Finding ripples in space-time (2015)
  • 99. The Tesla Roadster: Advertising enters the Space Age (February 2018)
  • 100. The Event Horizon Telescope: The first glimpse of a black hole (2019)
  • Resources and Photo Credits
  • Acknowledgments
  • About the Author