VOICE ONE:
This is Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Shirley Griffith with the Special English programEXPLORATIONS. Today, we tell about the latest flight of the spaceshuttle Discovery to the International Space Station. We tell abouta new high-flying aircraft. We report about new research into oceanstorms. And we tell about new and exciting pictures taken by theHubble Space Telescope that can be seen on a computer.
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VOICE ONE:
Recent pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show a hugearea of space where new stars are being born. The Wide Field andPlanetary Camera on the space shuttle took the pictures.
The pictures show extremely clearly a cloud of gas and dustcalled the Thirty-Doradus Nebula. The cloud surrounds an area ofstar birth. The pictures show material being exploded into spacefrom groups of stars in the nebula. This group of stars is calledR-One-Thirty-Six. It includes some of the largest stars yetdiscovered.
Scientists say the young hot stars in R-One-Thirty-Six produceintense winds and streams of material traveling at several millionkilometers an hour. The pictures show an event that took place abouttwo-million years ago.
VOICE TWO:
The huge stars in Thirty-Doradus Nebula are very beautiful eventhough they are involved in violent activity. The stars look like agroup of diamonds that shine a bright blue. They seem to have beendropped into an area of space, like large pieces of blue ice.
These extremely bright stars are surrounded by other stars thatare a yellow color and are much less bright. The whole area issurrounded by what looks like thin clouds.
The space telescope image of the Thirty-Doradus Nebula combinesfive pictures. They were taken between January Nineteen-Ninety-Fourand September of Two-Thousand.
VOICE ONE:
The Hubble space telescope has also taken beautiful pictures of adying star in the Calabash Nebula. Stars like the sun in ouruniverse grow very old and die. When this happens they expel most oftheir material as huge amounts of gas and dust.
A team of Spanish and American astronomers used the Hubbletelescope to study how the huge amounts of gas from a dying starcrash into surrounding material. The pictures show gas in yellowflowing at high speed from a star hidden at the center of thenebula. This yellow stream crashes into surrounding matter shown inblue.
Much of the violence seems to be caused very suddenly when hugeamounts of gas from the dying star began speeding up to intensespeeds. The scientists who are studying the new pictures say thisevent took place about eight-hundred years ago.
VOICE TWO:
If you have a computer you can see these beautiful pictures inbright colors. Ask your computer to search the World Wide Web partof the Internet. Enter the name Hubble. That is spelled H-U-B-B-L-E.Or search for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory by entering theletters, J-P-L.
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VOICE ONE:
On August Thirteenth, an aircraft without a pilot sent a newrecord. It reached an altitude of almost thirty-thousand meters. Itwas flying for about seventeen hours. The aircraft is named Helios.It is controlled from the ground by people using a radio.
Helios was built by the AeroVironment Company of California, withsupport from the American space agency, NASA. The aircraft lookslike a huge wing without a tail. The wing is more than seventy-fivemeters long. It has fourteen electric motors that each turn apropeller. Sixty-six thousand solar cells that make electricity fromsunlight provide the power for the motors. The aircraft can take offonly in full sun.
The Helios flying wing is able to fly three times higher thannormal airplanes. NASA hopes that some time in the future Heliosaircraft will be able to remain at extremely high altitudes formonths. They could be used to measure atmospheric conditions. Orthey could provide low cost communications links. And, NASAscientists say a Helios flying wing could be used to fly in the thinatmosphere over Mars.
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VOICE TWO:
Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are learningabout huge ocean storms. They are flying airplanes carrying newscientific instruments through the storms.
The goal of the experiment is to take the mystery out of oceanstorms. The experiment is called the Fourth Convection and MoistureExperiment. The NASA scientists are examining how a storm grows morepowerful and how it moves. They are flying airplanes from the UnitedStates Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. The two airplanescarrying the new instruments will fly over, through and aroundstorms in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the AtlanticOcean.
VOICE ONE:
Bjorn Lambrigtsen is the leader of the research team. He designedan instrument that is used to gather information about the storms. Aspecial aircraft that can fly more than twenty kilometers highcarries the instrument.
The instrument looks below and from side to side. It records thetemperature of the air, the amount of water in the air, and how theclouds are formed inside the storm. Mister Lambrigtsen and his teamare on these extremely high flights.
VOICE TWO:
Other scientific teams are using different instruments on anairplane similar to a passenger plane. One instrument measures waterin the air as the plane flies through the huge storms.
Other instruments provide information about the amount of heatfound in the storm. This information is used to create a map of airtemperature at different points. Another instrument on the airplanemeasures the amount of rain.
NASA began this ocean storm experiment August Sixteenth. It willcontinue until September Twenty-fourth.
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VOICE ONE:
On August Twenty-Second, the American Space Shuttle Discoverylanded at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Discovery returned with thesecond group of crew members of the International Space Station.They had spent one-hundred-sixty-seven days in space.
The returning crewmembers were the commander, Russian cosmonautYury Usachev, and two flight engineers, American astronauts Jim Vossand Susan Helms. The three were brought back to Earth in specialseats designed to lessen the effects of their return to gravity.
VOICE TWO:
The Discovery space shuttle left the members of the third crew ofthe International Space Station in their new home. These crewmembersare astronaut Frank Culbertson, and cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov andMikhail Tyurin.
The Discovery crew also left supplies and equipment at theInternational Space Station. One piece of equipment is the LeonardoMulti-Purpose Logistics Module. The Leonardo module can be usedseveral times to carry supplies. It can also be used as a permanentpart of the space station. For this flight, twelve specialcontainers of experiments and equipment were inside the Leonardomodule.
VOICE ONE:
Discovery also carried into space something called the StudentExperiment Module. The module contained ten small experimentsdesigned by students in eleven different schools. These experimentsare part of a NASA program to improve education in science, spaceand space technology.
NASA’s space shuttles have been carrying Student ExperimentModules for the past five years. More than ten-thousand studentshave taken part in the project. Both high school and collegestudents design the student experiments.
The space shuttle carried a special experiment designed bystudents at Mayo High School in Rochester, Minnesota. The purpose oftheir G-Seven-Eight-Zero experiment is to investigate cell growth inan extreme lack of gravity. The experiment has six growing areasthat hold several kinds of seeds.
These experiments are part of the Hitchhiker ExperimentsAdvancing Technology program, known as HEAT. The HEAT programpermits students and others to take an active part in the Americanspace shuttle program.
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VOICE TWO:
This Special English program was written by Paul Thompson. Thisis Shirley Grifith.
VOICE ONE:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program in on the Voice of America.