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VOICE ONE:
This is Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English programEXPLORATIONS. Today we tell about an American astronaut who makesbeautiful photographs of space and Earth from the InternationalSpace Station. We also tell about a recently discovered dark spot onthe planet Jupiter. We report about efforts to produce low costfuel. And we tell about a new space telescope to be launched Aprileighteenth.
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VOICE ONE:
The American Space Agency, NASA, expects to launch a new spacetelescope on April eighteenth. It will go into space on a Delta Tworocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The new telescope is called the Space Infrared TelescopeFacility. It will permit space scientists to see objects that aretoo cold, distant or covered by dust or clouds for other telescopesto see.
The telescope searches the universe for objects that can only beseen by an infrared device that can see infrared light. Infraredlight can not be seen by the human eye.
British scientist Sir William Herschel discovered infraredradiation in eighteen-hundred. He did this by measuring thetemperatures in the colors of solar light as they passed through apiece of glass called a prism. The area just beyond the visible redproduced the highest temperature in his experiment. That is the areawhere there is no visible light. The discovery showed for the firsttime that there are forms of light which we cannot see with oureyes.
VOICE TWO:
NASA officials say the new telescope will make abouttwenty-thousand observations a year. It will look for the infraredradiation given off by objects deep in space.
Earth’s atmosphere blocks the infrared radiation of such objects.The telescope can also see objects that are hidden in space by dustclouds or gas. The Space Infrared Telescope Facility will be thelargest infrared telescope ever launched into space.
It will permit scientists to see into areas of space that arehidden from other telescopes. NASA says the telescope should be ableto operate for about thirty months.
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VOICE ONE:
Scientists have known for many years that if you mix oxygen andhydrogen fuel you can produce electric power. The device that doesthis is called a fuel cell. Oxygen and hydrogen are two of the mostcommon elements found in nature.
Combining oxygen and hydrogen in a fuel cell produces powerwithout producing harmful waste. The only waste produced by a fuelcell is water. This waste product is so clean that astronauts on thespace shuttle drink the water produced by fuel cells. The spaceshuttles are among the few devices that use fuel cells.
NASA scientists are working on problems that must be solvedbefore fuel cells will become common. When that happens, almost anydevice that needs electric power will be able to use a fuel cell.Fuel cells might be used to power cars, trucks, small computers andeven the popular telephones that people carry with them.
VOICE TWO:
Several companies have already produced automobiles that arepowered by fuel cells. However they are very costly to make. Anotherdifficult problem with fuel cells is the extreme temperatures theyproduce. Fuel cells made today produce temperatures of one-thousanddegrees Celsius. Because of this extreme heat, special materialsmust be used to build fuel cells.
VOICE ONE:
The Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials ispart of the University of Houston. Researchers there hope to make akind of fuel cell that will produce less than half the amount ofheat produced by fuel cells used today. The Texas center saysproducing a fuel cell that can operate at cooler temperatures willbe less costly.
Researchers like those at the Texas Center are working on sixdifferent kinds of fuel cells. Each uses a different method tocombine the hydrogen fuel with the oxygen to produce power.
All the major automobile companies are developing fuel cellvehicles. They will test several kinds of fuel cells until they findthe best one. In January, President Bush asked Congress to approvemore than one-thousand-million dollars to help develop this newtechnology.
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VOICE TWO:
Scientists have been watching a huge object on the planet Jupiterfor more than one-hundred years. It is a huge, long-lasting stormcalled the Great Red Spot. Scientists used to think it was thelargest thing on Jupiter. However, images from NASA’s Cassinispacecraft have found something at least as large. NASA scientistsare calling this new object the Great Dark Spot.
Bob West is a scientist at NASA’sJet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He says he wascompletely surprised when he saw the dark object. He says it is darkcloud two times as big as Earth. It is moving around Jupiter’s NorthPole.
VOICE ONE:
Mister West says he first saw evidence of the dark spot in anultraviolet picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope innineteen-ninety-seven. But it only appeared in one image out of manythat were taken by the Hubble over several years.
Mister West says he did not know what the dark spot was then. Nowhe knows. He says the Cassini spacecraft could see Jupiter’s NorthPole when it passed the large planet in two-thousand on its way toSaturn.
Mister West said photographs sent by Cassini showed the dark spotmoving in a circle and changing shape. He says the Cassinispacecraft was able to observe the huge cloud for eleven weeks.
VOICE TWO:
Mister West says the Cassini observations show that the GreatDark Spot and the Great Red Spot are very different. He says theGreat Red Spot is deep within the atmosphere of Jupiter. It is ahigh pressure storm system far below Jupiter’s clouds. The GreatDark Spot is very high in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
Mister West says the Great DarkSpot is trapped by fast-moving winds that circle Jupiter’s NorthPole. The winds act like a wall, keeping the Great Dark Spot movingin one place. Mister West says that something similar can be foundover Earth’s South Pole. Fast-moving winds there keep the ozone holenear the South Pole.
Mister West says observing the Great Dark Spot could helpscientists understand how these winds control huge objects. He sayshe would be very happy to have more pictures of Jupiter’s Great DarkSpot.
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VOICE ONE:
American Astronaut Don Pettit is extremely happy to be a memberof the crew of the International Space Station. Mister Pettit hasbeen living and working on the space station since Novembertwenty-fifth, two-thousand.
He is a member of the Expedition Six crew and the scienceofficer. Most of the time Mister Pettit is involved in scientificexperiments on the space station. However, when he is not workingMister Pettit likes to take photographs.
Don Pettit says he always sees something interesting out thewindow of the space station. He takes photographs of distant stars,galaxies, and the Earth.
In the past several weeks, he has been photographing auroras.Auroras are colorful lights in the sky. They are caused by electronsand protons from space that hit Earth’s atmosphere. This actionproduces red and green colors from oxygen and blue colors fromnitrogen. These colors can been seen from Earth in the NorthernHemisphere. They are often called the Northern Lights.
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Mister Pettit says the auroras move slowly across the sky. Hesays they seem like huge crawling objects that are forever changing.They move, come and go. Sometimes they are topped by huge redstructures shaped like feathers.
Mister Pettit says the International Space Station flew throughan aurora over Canada last January. He said, “The station wassurrounded by a red fog. Just below were green rivers of light. Iwanted to reach out the window and touch the light. But of course Icould not.”
VOICE ONE:
The auroras are not all Mister Pettit has photographed. He hasseen meteors or space rocks fall apart when they hit Earth’satmosphere. He has also seen satellites and other man-made objectsthat have been left in space.
Mister Pettit recently took some beautiful pictures of stars inthe Southern Hemisphere. The stars are called the Large MagellanicCloud, the Coal Sack Nebula and the Southern Cross.
If you have a computer, you can see some of Astronaut Pettit’sphotographs. Go to the Web site www.science.nasa.gov.
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VOICE TWO:
This program was written and produced by Paul Thompson. I’m BobDoughty.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Steve Ember. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS, aprogram in Special English on the Voice of America.