Your Name on Orbit

NASA’s Glory Mission to Carry Names

Okay, how many times have you been sitting there reading stuff on your computer and learned about the opportunity to send your name into orbit on a spacecraft?  Well, sure there was one a few months back, and maybe another one a few years ago… but hey, my point is, here’s another chance–and nothing says “coolness to the max” like having your name on a spacecraft, right?  Darned right!  And, if thousands of us do it, it will be (in the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie) a movement.

The latest satellite-based list of names going into space is on Glory mission, which will be launched to help scientists measure aerosols — airborne particles — in our atmosphere.

Send your name on Glory and get a certificate like this!

Of course, we all know that changes in our climate are taking place. Understanding ALL the aspects of our atmosphere is important. You’ve heard of the greenhouse gases that are affecting our climate, and these are important. But, scientists say that the effects of aerosols could play a role in that change.

Glory will carry two scientific instruments, the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, or APS, and the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, and two cameras that will be used to help identify clouds.  The APS instrument will be the main player in determining how and why aerosols affect our atmosphere. The TIM instrument will continue 30 years of measuring total solar irradiance, which is the amount of energy radiating from the Sun to Earth. Understanding the sun’s energy is an important key to understanding climate change on Earth.

Probing Earth’s Atmosphere

Using a Radiosonde

A radiosonde

When I was a little girl growing up in Boulder, Colorado, I remember one day seeing something floating above our house. As it got closer and closer, I could tell it was a balloon. Then, it floated out of sight. Later that day, my dad went out in the field (we lived on a farm) and found an instrument box attached to a limp balloon. He said it was called a radiosonde.

What a cool word!  Radiosonde. It sounded so exotic and “outer spacey” to me. Daddy called around and found it was a weather balloon sent up by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (which had offices and labs in Boulder).

Radiosondes go up into the atmosphere and take measurements of wind speeds, temperatures, altitudes, humidity, and other characteristics. They also measure the amounts of gases in our atmosphere. These balloons have been major players in atmospheric science since the 1930s.

We got to take the radiosonde back to the scientists, although I don’t remember that event too well. But, to me, that radiosonde was a mysterious and exciting link to the sky and our atmosphere. And, it’s interesting to note that scientists use them every day, around the world, to measure changes in our atmosphere.

Where Does Outer Space Start?

And other Interesting Questions

Back when I worked at the planetarium at CU, I used to do a lot of lectures for school kids. I’d always invite questions at the end of the session, and some of them were really quite good. For instance, after a talk about stargazing and the planets, I had one kid ask, “Where does outer space start?”

Instead of trying to answer right away, I asked the student, “Where do YOU think it starts?”  The whole class got in on it, and eventually we came up with an answer that it probably starts just above our planet’s atmosphere. They figured that out themselves, with a little prompting from me.  And, I could pull up images of Earth on the dome and we could talk about the “top” of the atmosphere by looking at it. Chalk one up for the use of a planetarium in education! (The commonly held definition is that space starts about 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) above our heads.)

Another time, I had a student ask about why we see stars at night but not during the day.  Of course, I did remind him that there IS one star we can see during the day, the Sun. But, he had a good question and once again, I asked him to think about reasons why we don’t see stars during the day.  Eventually we worked it out by going outside and talking about what it was that kept us from seeing the stars during daylight.

One of the most memorable question “events” I had was with a little girl who waited until the very end to ask her question. Just as I was about to end the Q&A period, she timidly raised her hand. I called on her and she asked, “What’s it like inside a black hole?”

Before I could answer, her teacher said, “Don’t ask stupid questions!”  (The same teacher had been silent when the boys in her class who had been giggling and goofing off during the whole lecture had asked me some really stupid questions like “How do you pronounce Uranus?” and acted quite silly when I seriously explained the proper pronunciation).

The little girl sort of wilted in her seat, but I wasn’t going to let her question go unanswered. First I mentioned that in science there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but that as some of the other students had demonstrated, there are silly questions. I explained that a question about black holes and their insides is a very good one that scientists speculate about all the time. By the time I got through with my answer, the little girl was smiling, the teacher was glowering, and the boys had stopped fooling around and began thinking of follow-up questions.

Science starts with questions like “what is this?” and “Why does it do that?”  and “How far away is it?” and “What’s it like on—?”  If you walk outside at night and look up at the stars, I guarantee that you’ll have questions about what you’re seeing. And, that the answers will always amaze you. And if they amaze YOU, think of what they’ll ignite in a child’s mind!