VOICE ONE:
This is Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Sarah Long with the VOA Special English programEXPLORATIONS. Today we tell about experiments to grow special plantson Mars. We describe a new book to help blind people touch the farplaces of the universe. We tell about the planned launch of theGenesis spacecraft to capture part of the Sun. And we tell about thelong silent Pioneer Ten spacecraft.
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VOICE ONE:
NASA scientists say they have sent and received radio messagesfrom the Pioneer Ten Spacecraft. Pioneer Ten was launchedtwenty-nine years ago on March Second, Nineteen-Seventy-Two. It isnow more than eleven-thousand-million kilometers from Earth.
Pioneer Ten was the first spacecraft to pass through a huge areaof space rocks called the asteroid belt. It was also the first totake close pictures of the planet Jupiter. In Nineteen-Eighty-Three,Pioneer Ten became the first human made object to leave our solarsystem. It did this when it passed beyond the orbit of the planetPluto.
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Larry Lasher is the Pioneer Ten Project Manager for NASA’s AmesResearch Center at Moffett Field, California. Mister Lasher saidNASA scientists had been listening without success for a radiosignal from Pioneer Ten for eight months. He said they are veryexcited to know that Pioneer Ten still can communicate with Earth.
Mister Lasher said NASA engineers decided the only way to get asignal from the spacecraft was to send a message and wait for ananswer. He said Pioneer received the message and answered with avery weak signal.
Radio messages to the spacecraft were sent from a special radiotelescope in Madrid, Spain. Pioneer Ten is so far away that radiosignals traveling at the speed of light still took almosttwenty-four hours to reach the spacecraft and return.
VOICE ONE:
NASA scientists who built Pioneer Ten knew it would pass out ofour solar system and into the far reaches of space. They placedpictures of a man and a woman on the spacecraft. They also placedinformation about Earth and recordings of human voices and thesounds of animals.
Pioneer Ten is traveling toward the constellation Taurus atalmost forty-five thousand kilometers an hour. It will pass thenearest star in about two-million years.
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VOICE TWO:
NASA expects to launch a new spacecraft called Genesis on JulyThirtieth. The spacecraft recently arrived at Florida’s KennedySpace Center. The Lockheed Martin Astronautices Company built it inthe western city of Denver, Colorado.
Genesis is designed to travel into space and capture small piecesof the Sun. It will do this by seizing small pieces of matter calledions and elements it finds in the solar wind. Solar wind flows intospace in all directions from the sun.
The solar wind carries matter released from the sun’s surface andpushes it far into space. Scientists hope to study the matter afterGenesis returns to Earth. They hope to learn more about the sun andthe materials in it.
Scientists say that will give them a better idea of how our solarsystem was formed.
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Genesis will be launched from a Boeing Delta Two rocket from CapeCanaveral. It will be aimed at a place in the solar system called”L- One.” This is a special place or path that will permit thespacecraft to use less than normal amounts of fuel. It will also bebeyond Earth’s magnetic influence.
The Genesis spacecraft will remain at “L- One” for two years.After arriving, it will open up and spread out a special collectiondevice. The device will permit it to collect material from the sunthat is carried by the solar wind.
Genesis will return to Earth with its captured material inTwo-Thousand-Four. The space matter will return to Earth in a smallcontainer called a capsule. Scientists do not want the capsule totouch anything on Earth. They want the space matter in it to remainpure and not mix with matter on Earth.
To prevent this, the capsule will come down through theatmosphere by parachute. As it nears Earth, specially trained pilotswill fly in helicopters to catch the parachute in the air. This willtake place several thousand meters above the western state of Utah.
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Scientists will open the capsule in a box that is extremelyclean. Then special tools will help the scientists identify thechemicals found in the sun.
The space material will be kept at the Johnson Space FlightCenter near Houston, Texas. Scientists will be able to study it in aspecial clean room.
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VOICE ONE:
For the past ten years, the Hubble Space Telescope has providedbeautiful and exciting pictures of objects in deep space. It willcontinue to do so in the future.
NASA has provided a place on the World Wide Web part of theInternet computer system so everyone can enjoy these unusualpictures.
Now, NASA has helped develop a book with many of these samepictures for people who are blind or have extremely poor eyesight.The new publication is called “Touch the Universe: A NASA BrailleBook of Astronomy.”
The book’s pictures are made so they can be touched and felt.This method is called Braille. Braille is a way blind people areable to read and write.
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The book was the idea of Bernhard Beck-Winchatz. He is ascientist and teacher at DePaul University in the Middle WesternCity of Chicago, Illinois.
Scientist and writer Noreen Grice of Boston also helped producethe book. Mizz Grice developed a way to add a raised surface to eachpicture to permit a blind person to feel what the Hubble picturelooks like.
Each of the Braille pictures was sent to the Colorado School forthe Deaf and Blind. Students there felt each picture and providedimportant suggestions for changes.
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The book is designed for students from age ten years and olderand adults. Four hundred copies will be published at first. The bookwill sell for just a little more than the cost of publishing it.Money earned from the sale of “Touch the Universe” will be used topublish more copies of the book. The book was developed as part ofan education program that is linked to the Hubble Space Telescopeproject.
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VOICE TWO:
A very unusual plant may be the first living thing from Earth tosettle on the planet Mars. Rob Ferl developed this new kind ofplant. He is a scientist at the University of Florida. His plantwill be able to communicate problems to scientists here on Earth.Mister Ferl calls his creation “a reporter gene plant.” NASA saysMister Ferl’s plant could fly on a spacecraft to Mars inTwo-Thousand-Seven. More than forty of his plants have already flownsuccessfully on a space shuttle flight.
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NASA plans to send several different kinds of plants to Mars. Ithopes one of these plants will be the kind created by Mister Ferl.
Mister Ferl’s reporter gene plants communicate by becoming adifferent color of green. They shine with a soft green light. Theplant can do this because Mister Ferl has linked the genes of anocean jellyfish with the genes of a mustard plant. In the ocean,this jellyfish responds to problems by turning green. Mister Ferlsays the jellyfish genes in the plant will mean the plant shineswith a green light to communicate a problem.
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Mister Ferl hopes the plant will be able to report differentconditions on Mars. For example a lack of oxygen will cause one kindof these plants to shine green. Another plant will show its greenlight when there is lack of water. Special cameras will record theplants that shine and send that information back to Earth.
Mister Ferl says plants are really very much like humans. Plantscan learn to live in many different environments. On Mars, theplants may find extreme temperatures and low air pressure. MisterFerl says creating plants that can communicate these kinds ofproblems will help future explorers plan for and survive theirexperience on Mars.
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Future explorers on Mars will need oxygen, food and pure water.Learning to grow plants on the distant planet will be an importantfirst step before humans can live there
NASA says plants grown on Mars will become part of a processcalled a “Bioregenerative” life support system. This means a systemin which humans, plants, and extremely small organisms calledmicrobes work together in a system that renews itself.
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This is how a “Bioregenerative” life support system might work.Plants take in the carbon dioxide that people breathe out andrelease it as air that people can breathe in. People also use theplants for food. Human waste is treated by the microbes and thenused to help new plants grow.
Any life support system the planet will probably involve growingcrop plants in Martian soil. Scientists say the special plants beingtested now may help humans survive on Mars.
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written Paul Thompson. It wasdirected by Cynthia Kirk. Our studio engineer was Keith Holmes. Thisis Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Sarah Long. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.