If it wasn’t for the billions of dollars we spend on machines, man would never be able to reach the moon and would never stand a chance in reaching for the Mars.
As a standard procedure, we always send machines first to bring back data to earth about whatever strange land we want to study. Through the years, some of these machines have become as popular as the people who rode them.
Most of these machines operated longer than expected. They say that as a standard procedure, the makers of these space ships would underpromise and then over deliver.
Here are some of the best one that contributed a great deal in our advancement.
1. Mars Spirit
The two rovers were launched atop separate boosters. Spirit left Earth on June 10, 2003, and Opportunity followed on July 7, taking advantage of the biannual close approach Mars and Earth make as they orbit the sun.
Spirit investigated soil target, “Paso Robles”, which contained the highest amount of salt found on the red planet. The soil also contained a high amount of phosphorus in its composition, however not nearly as high as another rock sampled by Spirit, “Wishstone”. The theory is that if there is that much salt, there was water.
At one point in the mission, Spirit lost one wheel but it was a blessing in disguise. Spirit’s dead wheel turned out to be a mixed blessing.
As it was traveling in December 2007, pulling the dead wheel behind, the wheel scraped off the upper layer of the Martian soil, uncovering a patch of ground that scientists say shows evidence of a past environment that would have been perfect for microbial life. It is similar to areas on Earth where water or steam from hot springs came into contact with volcanic rocks.
2. Mars Opportunity
Mission highlights include completion of the 90-sol (90 Martian days) mission, discovery of the first meteorite on another planet, Heat Shield Rock (Meridiani Planum), and over two years studying Victoria crater. The rover narrowly survived dust-storms in 2007, and is now making its way to Endeavour crater.
3. Mars Phoenix Lander
Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008. Some of its mission highlights:
- dug, scooped, baked, sniffed, and tasted Mars’ soil which confirmed the presence of water
- shot more than 25,000 pictures of the Red Plant
- determined that Mars harbored small deposits of salts that might have been nutrients for life
- discovered calcium carbonate on Mars, “a marker of effects of liquid water.”
4. Explorer 1
the first Earth satellite of the United States, launched as part of its participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two Earth satellites the previous year, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 and 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations.
It was the first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt.
5. Hubble
Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well-known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy.
The Hubble has helped to resolve some long-standing problems in astronomy, as well as turning up results that have required new theories to explain them. Among its primary mission targets was to measure distances to Cepheid variable stars more accurately than ever before, and thus constrain the value of the Hubble constant, the measure of the rate at which the universe is expanding, which is also related to its age.
Before the launch of HST, estimates of the Hubble constant typically had errors of up to 50%, but Hubble measurements of Cepheid variables in the Virgo Cluster and other distant galaxy clusters provided a measured value with an accuracy of ±10%, which is consistent with other more accurate measurements made since Hubble’s launch using other techniques.
Hubble helped to refine estimates of the age of the universe, it also cast doubt on theories about its future.
Astronomers from the High-z Supernova Search Team and the Supernova Cosmology Project used the telescope to observe distant supernovae and uncovered evidence that, far from decelerating under the influence of gravity, the expansion of the universe may in fact be accelerating.
This acceleration was later measured more accurately by other ground-based and space-based telescopes, confirming Hubble’s finding.