VOICE ONE:
This is Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program,EXPLORATIONS. Today we tell about a satellite that will search spacefor evidence of life on other planets. We tell about several newsatellites that will provide valuable information about Earth’sweather and oceans. And we tell about the flight of the SpaceShuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station.
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VOICE ONE:
The Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to the Kennedy Space Centerin the southern state of Florida, Friday, April Nineteenth. TheAtlantis and its crew spent ten days, nineteen-hours in space. Thespace shuttle carried two new devices to the International SpaceStation. One device is ninety-one meters long. It is called anS-Zero Truss.
The S-Zero truss is the center ofnine pieces that will be the outside frame of the space station. Itwill be used to support future additions to the Space Station. Whenall nine pieces are in place it will be one-hundred-nine meterslong.
VOICE TWO
Another device called the Mobile Transporter also arrived at thespace station with the crew of Atlantis. The transporter is verysimilar to a small railroad car. It moves along a track. It carriesthe space station’s mechanical arm.
The arm is a device used to lift objects from one place toanother. The transporter permits astronauts to move the huge armfrom one part of the space station to another.
The two devices were linked to the Space Station by crewmemberswho left the space shuttle and worked in space. One of thesecrewmembers, Jerry Ross, became the first human to be launched intospace seven times. He has also has the record for working outsidethe shuttle nine different times for more than fifty-eight hours.
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VOICE ONE:
NASA and the German Center for Air and Space Flight havesuccessfully launched two new satellites. The two satellites arecalled the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE forshort.
Both satellites are exactly thesame. They were launched by a Russian rocket launch vehicle fromRussia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome on March Seventeenth.
The two satellites separated after they were launched. Theirorbits are about five-hundred kilometers above Earth, but theytravel about two-hundred-twenty kilometers apart. They will orbitthe Earth sixteen times each day, one following the other.
VOICE TWO:
The GRACE satellites are the first launch in NASA’s Earth SystemScience Pathfinder program. Plans call for the GRACE satellites tobe used by several different kinds of scientific researchers for thenext five years. They will make monthly maps of Earth’s gravity. Themaps will be made from the information the satellites collect aboutvery small changes in Earth’s surface mass and the resulting changesin the pull of gravity. NASA officials say the GRACE satellites areone-thousand times better at collecting correct information thanmethods being used now.
The maps will be used by scientists who study the movement ofmasses of water on Earth including the oceans and the ice in Earth’spolar areas. And they will be used by researchers who study theeffects of gravity on Earth’s climate.
VOICE ONE:
As the GRACE satellites orbit the Earth, areas of strongergravity will pull the first satellite a little farther away fromother satellite. By measuring the change in distance between the twosatellites, scientists can draw an extremely good gravity map.
The satellites are being tested to make sure they are providingcorrect information. These tests will continue for about six months.After the tests are finished, the GRACE satellites will beginproviding gravity map information to scientists around the world.
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VOICE TWO:
NASA plans to launch a new Earth science satellite on May Secondfrom Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The new satellite isnamed Aqua. The name means water. The task of the Aqua satellitewill be to gather information about water in the Earth’s ecologicalsystem.
Aqua will carry six of the mostmodern scientific instruments. They will collect information abouthow water is formed into rain and how it changes back into a gasthat rises into the atmosphere.
VOICE ONE:
NASA scientists say the Aqua satellite’s greatest strength is itsability to gather several different kinds of information from manyplaces around the Earth at the same time. This kind of informationincludes water temperature, air temperature and areas of cold andheat.
The scientists say the satellite will let them study how thisinformation is linked into systems that affect Earth’s atmosphere.In the past this kind of information was gathered from only smallareas of the Earth. The Aqua satellite information will be used inresearch that will aid in understanding changes in weather and themovement of water and much more.
VOICE TWO:
One of the instruments on NASA’s new Aqua satellite will help theweather experts provide the public with much better informationabout future weather conditions. It is called the AtmosphericInfrared Sounder. The device will measure Earth’s atmosphere andprovide scientists with a lot of information about atmospherictemperature, water in the air, clouds, ozone and other gases.
Eric Fetzer is a weather expert at the Jet Propulsion Laboratoryin California. He says it is difficult for weather experts to becorrect because they can not get information from many differentplaces at the same time.
He says information is now gathered from weather balloons whichare sent high into the atmosphere and from some satellites. He saysthere is often no information from some areas of the world,especially over the oceans. That is because no one is there tocollect the information.
VOICE ONE:
Aqua’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument was designed toprovide new information that weather experts need from most areasthe Earth. And it will provide it very quickly.
Mister Fetzer says the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder on the Aquasatellite will begin providing weather information to the world’sweather experts within a year. He said NASA will be able to send theinformation from the Sounder to weather experts around the worldwithin three hours.
VOICE TWO:
Mister Fetzer says the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder will helpweather experts recognize large ocean storms as they are developing.He said a famous example took place in October ofNineteen-Eighty-Seven–the worst storm to hit Britain in two-hundredyears.
Weather experts did not have the information to correctly warnthe public about the large storm. Mister Fetzer says the new weatherinstrument will help provide some kind of warning of such dangerousstorms in the future.
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VOICE ONE:
In the past ten years astronomers have discovered more thanseventy planets outside our solar system. New instruments areplanned that will permit astronomers to search for life on these andother planets that might be discovered in the future.
The first of these new instruments to be sent into space iscalled the Terrestrial Planet Finder. NASA scientists say it willcarry the necessary technology to search for the kind of atmosphereor the chemicals that make life possible.
VOICE TWO:
NASA scientists say the Terrestrial Planet Finder should belaunched sometime in the year Two-Thousand-Fourteen. The planetfinder satellite will include instruments that can block the lightfrom far away stars. This will let other instruments on thesatellite search for smaller planets that cannot be seen by devicesin use now.
Astronomers will then be able to observe these planets andinvestigate the chemicals that are part of these planets. They willsearch for chemicals that produce atmospheric gases such as carbondioxide, water and ozone.
VOICE ONE:
NASA scientists say the best candidate for closer study would beany planet that has a moderate climate. If a planet is too hot,water disappears into a gas. If a planet is too cold, water freezes.Scientists say the best place to find life would be a planet thathas water like we have here on Earth.
NASA scientists say the Terrestrial Planet Finder may helpprovide the information needed to answer a very old question…”Are wealone in the Universe?
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VOICE TWO:
This Special English program was written by Paul Thompson. It wasproduced by Caty Weaver. This is Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And this is Mary Tillotson. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.