太空使命1.ppt

1Monitor Earth’s Climate National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System measure incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation. two dozen satellites of the Earth Observation System are reaching the end of their expected lifetimes If a satellite dies before relief arrives, gaps open up in the data record, making it diffi cult to establish trends the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already had to buy data from Indian satellites to monitor crop productivity. TWIN SATELLITES of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which detect the gravitational distortions caused by the movement of water, are already past their original planned lifetime. 2 Prepare an Asteroid Defens NASA’s Spaceguard Survey Searching for 100- to 1,000-meter bodies could largely piggyback on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) an instrument that a consortium of astronomers and companies (most famously Google) bodies that are either just ahead or just behind Earth in its orbit—the most dangerous ones—can be observed only at dusk or dawn, when they are easily lost in the sun’s glare Second, the instrument can estimate the mass of asteroids only indirectly, based on how bright they are NOT A SIGHT YOU WANT TO SEE: An asteroid of the dinosaur-killing sort would reach from sea level to the cruising altitude of commercial airliners. building a $500-million infrared space telescope and putting it in its own orbit around the sun. Dinosaur killers, 10 kilometers across, hit every 100 million years on average. Globally devastating asteroids, one kilometer or larger, come every half a million years or so. City destroyers, 50 meters across, strike perhaps once a millennium. 3 Seek Out New Life Outer-planet moons, notably Europa and Enceladus, appear to have vast underground seas and plenty of life’s raw materials. the $1.5-billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), a car-size rover scheduled for launch in late 2009 and landfall a year later. HOT-AIR BALLOON