Each week, CNN posts a collection of space images. This week, you can see the green comet Lulin, thousands of satellites orbiting Earth, and some photos from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Tags : Sputnik 1 starts space race 50 years ago
Sputnik 1: Oct. 4, 1957The "Sputnik crisis" was a turning point of the Cold War that began on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite. With its intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka, Russia was first out of the starting blocks in the space race.
The "simplest satellite"
Called PS-1, for "Prosteishiy Sputnik" — the Simplest Satellite, Sputnik 1 weighing just 184 pounds, was built in less than three months. Soviet designers built a pressurized sphere of polished aluminum alloy with two radio transmitters and four antennas.
Sergey Korolyov
Sergey Korolyov, both visionary scientist and iron-willed manager, pressed the Kremlin to let him launch a satellite. The reaction of the world so impressed Khrushchev that he pressed Korolyov to do it again. Working round-the-clock, Korolyov and his team built another spacecraft in less than a month. On Nov. 3, they launched Sputnik 2, which weighed 1,118 pounds. It carried the world's first living payload, a mongrel dog named Laika, in its tiny pressurized cabin.
Sputnik creates initiatives in science and math
The Sputnik crisis spurred a whole chain of U.S. initiatives, including NASA, NSF, DARPA, and even the "New Math".
The finish line - stepping on the Moon
Russia continued its lead in the space race with a moon probe, a photo of the far side of the Moon, a human in orbit, a woman in orbit, extra-vehicular activity, landing a probe on another planet (Venus), and the first space station. The United States captured the biggest prize, though, putting a human on the Moon (July 20, 1969).
Earth wobbles impact extinctions
in Earth and Space Science, Life Science, and Earth Structure and Processes
Wobbly planet Earth: Photo courtesy NASA.
The extinction of rodents and other mammals have been linked to variations in the Earth’s tilt and orbit, according to new research published in the journal Nature.
Dutch scientists studying 22 million year old rodent fossils in central Spain found that the rise and fall of the mammal species correlated with cooling periods due to changes in the Earth’s behavior. Rodents offer one of the best fossil mammal records and are excellent indicators of seasonal changes because of their short life spans.
"Extinctions in rodent species occur in pulses which are spaced by intervals controlled by astronomical variations and their effects on climate change," Dr Jan van Dam, of the Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said.
The researchers discovered two cycles associated with changes in climate, habitat and food availability are linked to the disappearance of rodent species. One cycle, which lasts 2.4 million years, is linked to variations in the Earth’s orbit. The other 1.2 million year cycle is related to changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Both cycles would cool the Earth, allowing the expansion of ice sheets and causing species to adapt or die out.
Right now Earth is in a relatively circular orbit and about 700,000 years away from the next period of axis stability.
"The environment is responsible to what happens to species," said Van Dam. "Biological factors are secondary, according to our results."
However, Larry Ciupik, an astronomer at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium says volcanic activities, plate tectonics and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also contribute to species turnover.
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