Space is a wonderful place and scientists on Earth are doing so much to find out what exists there.
The year 2017 has been very exciting as many new things have been discovered beyond your solar system – like a spacecraft landing on one of Saturn’s moons; finding new planets; witnessing a huge asteroid flying closer to Earth than the moon and seeing images of very bright galaxies very far away from Earth.
Glasgow Prestwick Airport are hoping that a Spaceport could be set up there making it possible to launch the first satellites and rockets from the UK. Wouldn’t that be fun?
There are a variety of space agencies across the world but the most famous research organisation is called NASA which stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA was responsible for the first moon landings and has astronauts living and working on the International Space Station far above Planet Earth. It uses very strong telescopes and space probes to find out information about the planets in your solar system. In 1997 NASA launched a spacecraft called Cassini. Eight years later in 2005 it landed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and started sending back information. Now in 2017 it has landed on another moon, Enceladus, and shows it to be a mass of ice underneath which an ocean can be found. Scientists think that there may be some form of life living in the ocean. Isn’t that exciting! NASA also used a huge telescope called the Spitzer Space Telescope and found seven new earth sized planets orbiting a single star. Just like your solar system. Imagine if people like you lived there?
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology report finding evidence of a giant planet further away than Pluto that would take 10,000 to 20,ooo years make one orbit of the sun. Wow! That is a long time! They have nick-named it Planet Nine and are asking members of the public to search for it on the pictures they have taken of the Kuiper Belt.
Another company working to find out about space is the European Space Agency known as ESA. Twenty two European countries have come together to take part in making satellites and rockets. The satellites help to make our lives better by predicting the weather, guiding satnavs, connecting mobile phones and much, much more. Some of ESA’s astronauts have walked in space to help fix the International Space Station.