Channel: World Unearthed

Category: Entertainment

Tags: projectspale blue dotmars travelnasa projectsbestmars landingexplainede.t.spaceresearchunknownvoyagerbiggesttopfinally explainedmysteriousoriginsinterstellar travelx15greatestgreatest nasa projectsunbelievablemarsnasa discoveriesapollocraziestexperimental aircraftgenesis capsulecraziest nasa projectsmoon landinggolden recordnasaextra terrestrialworld unearthedinterstellardeep spacediscoveryman on the moonspace craft

Description: From experimental aircraft, to interstellar space, today we will look at some of the craziest NASA projects Today, we will look at some of NASA’s ambitious, exhilarating and down right incredible projects. HEY YOU ! There are more awesome videos being made every week, like and subscribe to World Unearthed so you don't miss a beat ! 7. North American X-15 | 1959 - 1968 | EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT 6. NExSS | 2015 - ongoing | ET SEARCH 5.DST | 2027 + | Spacecraft 4.InSight | 2018 | Mars exploration 3. Genesis Capsule | 2001 | Return to Sender Genesis was a probe created by NASA with one simple goal in mind, collect a sample of solar wind particles. All things considered, the capsule has one of the coolest designs ever. This is what it looked like in its collecting configuration. The craft was launched in 2001 and in 2004, it became the first successful sample-return mission since the Apollo program to return material beyond the orbit of the Moon. The “return” phase of the mission did not go smoothly. The capsule crash landed in Utah on September 8th, 2004. A design flaw in the drogue parachute prevented its deployment. The crash contaminated many of the sample collectors with only a few being successfully recovered at first. The geniuses at NASA managed to remove a lot of the contamination and figured out different ways to analyze the solar wind particles that were collected. Overall, the Genesis science team managed to achieve all of the mission’s major science objectives. Incidentally, the desert dust contamination was the easiest to deal with, the capsule’s own compounds like lubricants and building-parts proved most difficult. So what did science learn from the solar wind samples ? Scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston announced that the Sun has a higher proportion of oxygen-16 relative to the earth, moon, mars, and bulk meteorites. Implying that some unknown process depleted oxygen-16 from the Sun’s disk of protoplanetary material prior to the merging of dust grains that formed earth and our neighbors. What does this information mean to you ? I don’t know, but maybe it will make you interested enough to research it further ! 2. Voyager 1 & 2 | 1977 | Interstellar Space Gary Flandro, an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered something incredible, in the late 1970s, the outer planets of our solar system would be aligned in a way that would allow a space probe to essentially “jump” from planet to planet using their gravitational force. This special alignment of planets happens once every 175 years, so time was of the essence. Thus, the Voyager program was born, and after a little science here, and a little science there, Voyager 1 and 2 were ready for launch in 1977. Interestingly, the Voyager 2 space probe was launched 2 months before Voyager 1. Both space probes delivered amazing results, giving us the first glimpses of the giants that lie beyond Mars. By 1989, Voyager’s primary mission was completed with the close flyby of Neptune by Voyager 2. On February 14th,1990, the Voyager 1 probe, which had completed its primary mission, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth, some 3.7 Billion miles away. You may know this photograph as the “Pale Blue Dot”. Immortalized by Carl Sagan in his book by the same name. It is the ultimate picture of us. By the late 1990s, Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object from Earth, a record that it will probably keep for generations. In 2012, with speeds exceeding 38,000 miles per hour, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space, in 2018, Voyager 2 did the same. Interstellar space is the space between stars in the galaxy, it's as close to an absolute vacuum you can get. At the start of this year, 2020, Voyager spacecraft are running out of power, one by one, instruments will be deactivated, until sometime around 2025, when there will no longer be sufficient power to operate any scientific instruments. But for me, that’s when Voyager's real mission starts. Both spacecraft carry golden phonograph records that contain data detailing the location of earth, music, pictures and sounds of Earth. These records are meant as a sort of time capsule and a message to any civilization that may stumble upon the spacecraft. Granted, the spacecraft are not expected to collide with a star for 1 sextillion years from now, one can dream of the possibilities. I think President Jimmy Carter summed it up pretty well. “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.” — President Jimmy Carter 1. Project Apollo | 1960s | Landing on the moon