Imagine you are floating in a spacecraft…

You are weightless! It feels so strange, yet amazing at the same time. You push off the wall and float down a long room. You feel like Superman flying across empty space. You duck your head and do a quick flip before landing against the other wall, then push off it to soar in the opposite direction. At the end of the next room, you grab a handle and stop to look out the round bubble window. Far below you see a glittering blue ocean, clouds, and brown land. You are 200 miles above earth on board the International Space Station.

Speed and Orbit

Have you ever heard of the International Space Station? Right now it’s circling the earth above you at 17,000 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour). It is going so fast that it orbits the earth every 90 minutes — that means 15 ½ times a day! That’s incredibly fast! Some people think the Space Station is floating in space, but it’s actually falling around the earth in what is known as an orbit. 

The International Space Station, also known as the ISS, is special because it’s not owned by a single country, but by many countries who worked together to build it. It started off as a single module and has grown piece-by-piece into the larger station it is now. In 1998 Russia launched the module Zarya into low earth orbit as the first piece. Low-earth orbit means it is still within the earth’s orbit, not far off in space beyond the earth’s strong gravitational pull. 

Construction

Two weeks after Zarya was launched, the United States launched its own space shuttle with the Unity module and its astronauts onboard. The next step was connecting the first two modules. The astronauts did this by floating out into space and attaching them. And that is how the International Space Station began!  After that other pieces were slowly added to the ISS until it grew and grew. In 2000 came the Russian module Zvezda, then NASA’s Destiny module. Canada’s space program contributed a robotic arm for spacewalks and to make remote controller repairs. The Harmony module came in 2007, then the European Space Agency sent up the Columbus module. Japan sent up its own module in 2008. Next came NASA’s Tranquility module, then Europe’s Leonardo module and finally the Bigelow module sent up by a private company. One reason ISS is amazing is that it is a team effort!

Space Station Activities

Usually, around 3 to 6 astronauts live and work on the ISS at a time. It was made for many reasons, but one of them was to do research. Since humans plan to go to Mars someday, they are using the ISS to see how space will affect the astronauts during their journey to Mars. For example, what will space flight do to their bodies? What kind of foods will they need to eat? What kind of exercise will they need? Will they be able to grow plants? They’ve also tried out the different devices they’ll need in space such as 3D printers and coffee makers.

On the ISS the crew’s days are very busy and besides doing experiments, they spend a lot of time doing maintenance — which means keeping the station running smoothly. Each astronaut has different responsibilities, sort of like you might have doing chores at home. Only by working together will the ISS continue to work properly. Often the astronauts climb into their space suits and space walk — which means going outside of the ISS and floating around to make repairs. This can be dangerous work, so they always attach themselves to the ISS for safety. The astronauts have also been testing a robot that they can use to fly around the ISS and make repairs for them.

The other important part of an astronaut’s day is taking care of themselves, making sure they eat the right foods, showering, brushing their teeth, and getting exercise. They also do things like video chat with schoolchildren and talk about what they’re doing with people around the world. They do this to get others excited about the space station and space research. 

Eating in zero gravity can be very tricky! Their food has to be strapped down to a table and utensils and water bottles have magnets on them to keep them from floating away. If you look on the internet you can find some funny videos of the crew doing flips, floating around and dancing, and playing with water. In zero gravity water floats around in blobs!

Space Station Crew

People from 19 different countries have visited the ISS. These include the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Now you see why they call it the International Space Station. International means “many countries.” At the ISS it’s exciting to see people from many different countries working together. It’s a perfect example of how working together with people across the world can accomplish amazing things! 

Space Tourism

Many people dream of visiting space someday and some companies promise that someday anyone who can pay for it will be able to do it. Right now it can be very expensive (and at times not even possible) to visit places like the ISS, but someday space vacations may be available to everyone. Can you imagine visiting a place like the ISS or a far-off hotel on the moon? This is called space tourism and a few very wealthy people have been able to visit the ISS by paying for it. It costs them many millions of dollars! 

Anousheh Ansari

One of these people was Anousheh Ansari. Anousheh was born in Iran and moved to the United States when she was little. She was interested in engineering and graduated from college to become an engineer. She and her husband later started a company that grew and grew until they were very wealthy. She’d always dreamed of going to space and became interested in visiting the space station. When she found out they were allowing some to visit the ISS if they paid, she jumped on the chance. First Anousheh trained for the journey, then took a Russian rocket up to the ISS and lived and worked there for a short while. There Anousheh helped do experiments and later wrote a book about her amazing journey. 

Chris Hadfield

One of the most well-known astronauts to live on the ISS is Chris Hadfield. Chris was born in Ontario, Canada. He grew up on a farm with his family where they grew corn. When Chris was little he became interested in flying and later saw the Apollo 11 moon mission, which made him want to be an astronaut like Neil Armstrong. Later, he went to college, then joined the Canadian Air Force. This eventually led to training as an astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency and working on the International Space Station. On the ISS Chris shared his day-to-day activities on Twitter and Facebook and later made a music video on YouTube while playing the guitar in space! This brought even more attention to the important work they were doing on the ISS. 

Records

Many records have been set by the crew of the ISS — such as most consecutive days in space by an American, which was 340 days by astronaut Scott Kelly. The other cool thing about Scott’s trip to the ISS is he is a twin, so they were able to study how space affected Scott versus his twin brother who stayed on Earth. 

Another record was the longest spaceflight by a woman at 289 days by Peggy Whitson. 

The ISS also holds the record for most people in space at once, which was a crew of 13 in 2009.

How do you see the space station?

Did you know you can see the space station from earth? With the help of your parents, if you go to spotthestation.nasa.gov you can sign up to receive text messages or emails whenever the space station is visible above you. Recently, my kids and I did this and it was amazing to see it float across the night sky like a star. 

It Takes Teamwork!

One of the best lessons we can learn from the International Space Station is that by working together people all over the world can do amazing things. Isn’t this so much better than focusing on our differences and fighting? One problem in the world is when people look at those who are different and think there is something wrong with them because they aren’t the same. But differences are what keep the world interesting and there is so much we can learn from each other, from our different experiences and customs, and beliefs. The space station shows that even though we have differences we have common goals, like visiting space and learning about space and the Earth. As we focus on what is common, we can work together to do great things. 

Conclusion

A couple of years ago I worked with a man from India. I’d never met someone from India, so it was very interesting listening to his homeland, what it was like to grow up in India, and his different beliefs. He celebrated different holidays and had different ideas about the world, but it fascinated me to try and see the world through his eyes. As we got to know each other we became friends and I look back on our talks with fondness.

Take a moment to think of someone you know who is different than you. They might be from a different country, look different, talk differently or act in a different way. Take the leap and ask them a few questions and try to get to know them better — because chances are you’ll learn something interesting and possibly make a new friend in the process!

Recommended Books

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Sometimes, siblings end up leading very different lives. And sometimes, they end up needing each other more than they realize, even when they’re grown up.

Birth of William and Caroline Herschel 

William and Caroline Herschel were born into the same family, but their opportunities in life were very different. Born in Hanover, Germany in the early eighteenth century, William was 12 years older than Caroline. At the time, as you might guess, girls were expected to learn how to run households and get married. But it wasn’t just the fact that Caroline was a girl that limited her opportunities. She was also sick a lot as a child. A bout of smallpox at age four left her face scarred. At 10, she suffered a typhus infection, which stunted her growth: she only grew to a height of 4 foot 3.

All this misfortune left Caroline’s mother, Anna, sure that her youngest daughter would never be able to marry.  Anna didn’t approve of girls being educated either. That left housework. She decided Caroline would become a servant, and promptly began treating her like one. 

While Caroline learned to cook and mend stockings, her brothers went to school and learned to play musical instruments. Their father, Isaac Herschel was a member of a military band. Though he was often away from home, he didn’t share his wife’s views on education for girls. When he did come home, he would always find time to teach Caroline alongside her brothers.  He even took her out one chilly evening to show her the stars and a comet.  So she did end up with a basic education.

With her ability to read and write, Caroline helped her mother, who couldn’t do either, write letters to her father when he was away. Other military wives in their neighborhood also took advantage of her skills. Whenever she found a spare moment without any chores, she made the most of it by reading or playing the violin.

Still, Caroline felt lost and forgotten in her large family. But William always seemed to notice her and stand up for her. After their father died, he suggested that Caroline come and live with him and their brother Alexander in England. He was working as a musician in the city of Bath, and thought he might be able to train Caroline to sing in his performances. William played several instruments – violin, harpsichord, oboe- and also wrote songs and symphonies. 

Caroline had looked around for years, trying to find something other than the dull drudgery of housework she could do to support herself. She had learned how to knit and make frilly dresses and fancy hats, but her mother insisted she only do these things for family members. She had hoped to learn French so she could become a governess, caring for a wealthy family’s children. Her mother forbade it. Singing for her brother sounded like the perfect escape! William made a deal with his mother: He would pay for a servant to replace Caroline, and she would come to England to train as a singer. 

Astronomy: A New Hobby

So Caroline finally left her dreary life as the family servant behind at the age of 22. On their journey to England, she and William rode on top of their carriage at night, and he re-introduced her to the hobby their father had shared all those years ago: astronomy. William pointed out stars and constellations and told her about the telescopes he used to view them at home. They stopped at optician’s shops in London where William scoured the supply of mirrors and lenses for ones he might use to build new telescopes. 

When they arrived in Bath, things didn’t go as Caroline hoped, at least not immediately. She was frustrated to learn that she would still have to do most of the housework for her brothers. But in addition to the housework, she was learning and improving herself every day. William began tutoring her in math, bookkeeping, English, and, of course, singing. 

Caroline took two or three singing lessons each day and soon began to perform in public. After a few years, she had become famous in Bath! She got offers to sing in festivals, but she insisted on only performing when William was conducting. 

In the meantime, William was becoming more and more obsessed with his astronomy hobby. He’d stay up late, observing stars, and tell Caroline what he’d seen in the morning. Soon, Caroline became William’s astronomy assistant as well. He built a tall platform to observe from. He would yell down the positions of stars and nebulae and other celestial objects, and Caroline would record them carefully in her notebooks. Even on the coldest nights, they bundled up so they could keep watching the sky. 

Soon, Caroline was learning more advanced geometry and algebra so she could measure the distances and angles between celestial objects. She began making her own observations of the night sky. The siblings recorded every object they saw as they gazed up into the cold, dark heavens. 

Building a New Telescope

But William wasn’t satisfied with the tools he had at hand. Telescopes at the time didn’t magnify as much as he would have liked. They used small concave mirrors–think of a shallow bowl–to gather light from far off in space, then that image reflected onto another small, flat mirror that the observer looked at. But these mirrors were only a few inches across, and bigger mirrors would mean more magnification. But no one knew how to make a larger mirror that was still clear and smooth enough to create a sharp image. 

William bought his own equipment and began experimenting with creating his own mirrors. At first, Caroline was mostly responsible for making sure William had food to eat while he labored long hours on his mirrors. But soon, she began to help grind and polish the mirrors as well. It was smelly, messy work– they created molds for their mirrors out of horse poo– but after some practice, William created a better mirror: 6 inches across, polished to a perfect, smooth, uniform surface. He mounted it in a 5-foot-long telescope tube. Later, he created an even bigger mirror and built a 20-foot telescope! 

New Discoveries for William and Caroline Herschel

With their new instruments, the pair racked up thousands of discoveries. William realized that many bright stars were actually two stars that were so close together that they appeared to be one unless you looked at them through a powerful telescope. Likewise, some fuzzy objects that people once thought were nebulae turned out to be clusters of stars. Caroline discovered eight comets and thousands of new nebulae and star clusters using the better telescopes. 

In 1781, William made his most exciting discovery yet. He noticed a fuzzy object in the sky that looked a bit like a comet. But it didn’t behave like a comet. After watching it for weeks and calculating its orbit, he realized it was a planet! No one had discovered a new planet since ancient times. William decided to name the planet Georgium Sidus, or George’s Star, after the current king of England, King George the Third.

The Royal Astronomer

The name didn’t stick–eventually another scientist renamed it Uranus, after a Greek god. But King George didn’t let the compliment go unrewarded. He asked William to become the royal astronomer! William accepted, and he and Caroline moved closer to the palace. 

William even requested that Caroline be paid a salary, and King George agreed. Not only could Caroline now support herself–something she’d longed for her entire life–she also became the first woman to be paid for doing science! 

Working for the king allowed the Herschels to take on even bigger, more ambitious projects. King George gave William the money to build what would be the largest telescope ever constructed. It would have a 4-foot, one-thousand-pound mirror and be over forty feet long! That’s about the length of ten Caroline Hershcels! The telescope would have to sit on a specially designed rotating platform and would be supported by an elaborate system of scaffolding. It took 5 years to build. When it was done, they threw a party, with guests dancing in and out of the tube before it was put in place. 

William married in 1786, but unfortunately, Caroline didn’t get along with his new wife at first. After spending her entire adult life by her brother’s side, Caroline had to move out on her own as William’s wife took over running his household. But eventually, the two women seem to have mended their relations, and Caroline wrote about her in friendly terms in later journals. She became a role model and educator for their son, John, shaping him into a first-rate astronomer in his own right. 

Caroline kept herself busy with her own astronomical projects as well. She created a catalog of all known stars. An astronomer named John Flamsteed had created a catalog years earlier, but Caroline’s would correct many errors and add more than 500 new stars. The Royal Astronomical Society in London published her work in 1798. 

Royal Astronomical Society

William passed away in 1822. Caroline was devastated by the loss of her brother, but kept on studying the night sky, carefully recording every detail. She and William’s son, John, worked together to catalog their observations. Eventually, she moved back to Germany. She was famous and respected for her work. The Royal Astronomical Society in London and the King of Prussia–now part of Germany–presented her with gold medals. She lived until the age of 97, and died peacefully in her sleep in her hometown of Hanover.  

Together, William and Caroline discovered over 2,000 objects in space – asteroids, comets, nebulae, and star clusters. William’s gravestone has the Latin words Coelorum perrupit claustra engraved on it–”He broke through the barriers of the heavens.” Not only did he break through the barriers of the heavens, he made sure his sister was able to break through with him. Caroline saw that knowledge could help her leave behind a life of drudgery and housework if only someone would share it with her. William saw that his sister was smart and capable, and refused to let her talents go to waste. 

Together, William and Caroline changed how people viewed the universe, and opened many eyes to its wonders. And together, these siblings did more than either one could do alone!

Sources

https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/a-giant-of-astronomy

https://scientificwomen.net/women/herschel-caroline-43

https://www.space.com/18704-who-discovered-uranus.html

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/herschel/memoir/memoir.html 

Krull, Kathleen (2013) Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and what the Neighbors Thought). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.

The post History of William and Caroline Herschel for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Have you ever wondered what makes a rainbow? This is a question that many children wonder about, and now, most parents have a ready answer (though some might encourage you to guess anyways!). But in the past, people didn’t know how these beautiful arcs of color formed in the sky. Some people were curious enough to ask why, but until the 1600s, no one did much more than make thoughtful guesses. It would take a mind nearly as bright as the sun to solve that and many other mysteries of how nature works. His discoveries paved the way for the modern fields of physics, astronomy, and math.

Early Life of Isaac Newton 

The person who discovered what makes a rainbow was born into a rather dull world. Isaac Newton’s story begins on a sheep farm surrounded by apple orchards in rural England on Christmas day in 1642. Born prematurely to a poor family, no one expected the sickly infant to survive, but he did! Unfortunately, his father wasn’t so lucky. While little Isaac would live to be 84 years old, his father died three months before he was born. Isaac’s mother remarried to a well-off minister when he was two years old. Isaac never liked his stepfather and lived with his grandparents for much of his early childhood.

Isaac’s mind was so bright and active that he needed little else to hold his interest in the quiet hamlet where he lived. He wanted to know how the world worked and found all kinds of questions to occupy his mind. His mother, however, didn’t see much value in education, and after sending him to school briefly, pulled him out and tried to get him to help with the farm work. Isaac hated farm work–it kept him from exploring the many big questions about the world that flooded his head. Fortunately, Isaac’s uncle and his teacher both saw what a brilliant intellect he possessed. Seeing how poorly Isaac performed as a farmhand, his mother eventually took their advice and sent her son back to school. 

Isaac flourished in school, where he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. When he had learned all he could at the local school, he headed off to Cambridge University. He mostly ignored his fellow students, even his roommate, and spent most of his time alone in his room. There he could let his mind play– with the ideas of the ancient philosophers, the observations of famous astronomers, and complicated mathematical formulae. His books, his quill pen, and the shadows creeping across the walls seemed to be the only company he needed as he delved into these subjects in a search for truth. 

After graduating from Cambridge, Isaac returned home for two years. An outbreak of bubonic plague was sweeping England, and he felt it was best to isolate himself. This also suited Isaac’s preferences. He finally had an excuse to spend all his time alone in his studies, and he took full advantage. He spent his days reading, calculating, and setting up experiments.

Isaac Newton’s Experiments

Some of Isaac’s experiments didn’t work out. He tried to concoct a cure for the plague using rose water and turpentine, but it didn’t work. He also dabbled in alchemy, attempting to create gold from other, non-precious materials, a hobby he would come back to many times over his life. We now know this is impossible, but many people at the time thought it could be done.

Isaac’s experiments with light had better outcomes. He was fascinated by prisms, crystals shaped like triangles that create rainbows when light shines through them. Isaac was curious why this happened. Most people at the time thought that prisms somehow “corrupted” white light, adding in the colors of the rainbow, but Isaac suspected this wasn’t true. His experiments led him to the conclusion that plain white light from the sun was actually made up of all these different colors, and the prism split them apart. 

In one experiment, Isaac set up three prisms in a row so that light from a window would shine through them, but their rainbow colors would overlap on the edges. Where the broken-up light from different prisms overlapped, the wall was white! The colors had mixed again into white light! He also lined up two prisms, putting a wall with a hole between them. He set up the first prism so that only the red light from the rainbow hit the hole in the wall and went on to hit the second prism. The red light passed through the second prism, hitting another wall beyond. This light couldn’t be broken up anymore, and of course, the second prism didn’t “add” colors to it, which should have happened if prisms worked the way other people thought. If Isaac rotated the first prism slightly, he could direct the blue, or yellow, or orange light to pass through the hole and onto the second prism. With each color he tried, the light hit at a different point on the final wall after passing through the second prism! Each color bent at its own special angle when it passed through the prism. 

These were simple experiments–you could even ask your parents to buy some inexpensive prisms and try them yourself. Some of his experiments I wouldn’t recommend trying at home. He also tried to find out if he could see the rainbow colors of light by pushing on the back of his eyeball with a long, blunt sewing needle. Again, don’t try this at home! Still, Isaac’s unique mind let him imagine new ways to explore how light really worked instead of just believing what others had said before. 

But, if you’ve heard one story about Isaac Newton before now, it’s probably about how he discovered gravity. That story recounts how an apple fell on his head and led him to the idea that there was a special force called gravity. This is also the story that Isaac liked to tell about the discovery! Gravity, Isaac theorized, is the force that makes larger objects, like the earth, pull smaller objects, like you and me and the apple, toward them. All objects, even very small ones, have gravity, but small objects only have a tiny bit compared to something as massive as the Earth. Isaac realized that gravity could explain not only the apple falling from the tree, but also the orbits of the moon and planets.

The idea of gravity led Isaac to think in new ways about how objects move. He experimented with motion and force, and formulated his three famous laws of motion based on these experiments. The first law was that if an object is at rest, or standing still, it would stay that way unless something came along and pushed or pulled it. Likewise, if an object was moving, it would keep moving in a straight line unless, again, something pushed or pulled it to make it stop. These pushes and pulls are called “forces.” The second law says that how much an object speeds up has to do with both how strong of a force is applied and how heavy the object is. Finally, his third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, forces come in pairs. Imagine you and a friend are ice skating. If you face each other, put your palms together, and push, both of you will be propelled backward. If you’re about the same size, both of you will go about the same distance. But if one of you is much bigger, the smaller person will go back farther and faster. 

Newton’s Explorations in Mathematics

Isaac also worked out the math that explained his laws. Some of this math was fairly simple, but when it came to explaining gravity and the orbits of planets things got complicated. In fact, he developed a new branch of math called calculus to explain what he was seeing. Calculus is a kind of math used to describe things that are continuously changing, getting faster and slower. Think of the curve that a ball follows through the air when you throw it, or how fast a rocket is going at any given time as it blasts into space. These actions involve motions and forces and objects that are different weights and sizes. They get faster or slow down at different times. Very complicated! 

Isaac Newton didn’t share his discoveries about calculus for a long time. He didn’t enjoy the attention his big discoveries brought him, and may have wanted to avoid it. He just wanted to discover the truth about how the universe worked. When he finally did tell people about it, another mathematician named Gottfried Leibniz had also come up with the same kind of math!  Newton and Leibniz would both argue that they were first, but it didn’t really matter. Both were very smart and had come up with the ideas on their own. 

After the plague died down, Isaac returned to Cambridge and became professor. He continued to spend most of his time studying and experimenting. He often ignored his own needs while deep in thought and study. He’d stay up late at night thinking, writing and experimenting. When he did sleep, he usually didn’t change into pajamas, and he went days without combing his hair. He ate simple meals of porridge or milk and eggs, and at times ate only foods from vegetables. 

Isaac Newton’s Later Life

As Isaac got older, he began to take on some new and unexpected responsibilities. He was chosen to represent Cambridge University in Parliament, which is part of the government. True to his introverted nature, he rarely spoke up in debates. Later, he was chosen to run the Royal Mint, which was the part of the government that made money. 

Isaac liked the capital, London, and moved there. Although he was never on good terms with his half-siblings from his mother’s second marriage, it seems he liked his nieces and nephews. He lived with his niece, Catherine Barton for many years, and left his papers and journals to her. He split the rest of his belongings between all his nieces and nephews.

Isaac Newton once wrote that truth was his greatest friend. Few people–if any–have contributed as much to scientific discovery as he did. We’ve only touched the surface of all his accomplishments. His work in calculus and physics launched an entirely new era in science. He set an example for future scientists by carefully designing experiments to answer very specific questions. His laws of motion helped later scientists send people to space on rockets and return them to Earth safely. He scrutinized the natural world and challenged assumptions about how things worked. The truth was his greatest friend, but he also proved himself a great friend to truth. 

Sources

https://www.coolkidfacts.com/laws-of-motion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

https://www.wondriumdaily.com/the-discovery-of-gravity-and-laws-of-motion-by-isaac-newton/

Krull, Kathleen (2013) Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and what the Neighbors Thought). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.

The post History of Isaac Newton for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Everyone spends time learning what they like, and what they’re capable of. Sometimes, they learn that what they are capable of isn’t what they like, and something else is calling them. That happened to Sally Ride.

Early Years of Sally Ride

Before we can get to what happened though, let’s go back to Southern California in the year 1951. This was the year Sally was born to Dale and Carol Ride. As a child, Sally’s dream job was to play baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers. She was athletic, and was often chosen first for baseball teams. Of course, no women played major league baseball at the time, but this didn’t matter to Sally. Dale and Carol raised her and her sister, who was nicknamed Bear, to explore and try anything that interested them. To Sally, this meant playing sports and stargazing through a telescope with her father. Her favorite constellation was Orion. Many people in the 1950s thought of these as “boy” things, but Sally knew they were also girl things.

Sally Ride and Tennis

When she was nine, Sally’s family traveled to Europe. Between seeing the amazing sites, Sally played tennis for the first time on the trip. Just like that, Sally was hooked. Tennis became the center of her life. When they got back to the United States, Dale and Carol got Sally a tennis coach and she began competing. Before long, she was ranked in the top 20 players under 12 in Southern California! 

Tennis also opened doors for Sally. A private high school gave her a scholarship to play for their team. In high school, Sally rediscovered her love of science. One teacher, Dr. Elizabeth Mommaerts, helped her see that there were opportunities for her in science. At the time, there weren’t many women who got advanced degrees in science, but Dr. Mommaerts had a PhD in human physiology. Sally was amazed by how smart and curious her teacher was, and how she approached every problem carefully and methodically, like a puzzle. 

After high school, tennis again helped Sally find a place at school. She headed to Swarthmore College to study physics and play on the tennis team. Soon after arriving though, Sally’s mind began to wander to new possibilities. She was excelling at tennis: she won all her college matches, and even became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women’s Singles champion! Sally decided she wanted to try to become a professional tennis player. She packed up her bags and left Pennsylvania to return to Southern California. 

Back in sunny California, Sally practiced every day for hours, year-round. But soon, she realized that she’d need to train even more in order to make it as a pro. Her body ached. She was tired. Playing tennis wasn’t as fun when she had to do it eight hours a day in order to compete. Sally decided to return to college full time. 

Collegiate Life of Sally Ride

Sally headed to Stanford University, about a six hour drive from Los Angeles. There, she reacquainted herself with her other childhood passion: science. She studied physics: how stars and planets work, and even lasers! 

This time, Sally was sure she’d made the right choice about her future. In fact, she stayed at Stanford an extra five years to earn her PhD in physics. 

But even as Sally focused more on physics, she was still open to new opportunities. One morning in 1977, shortly before she finished her PhD, a huge opportunity stared her in the face when she opened her morning paper. It was the kind of opportunity that made all her past hobbies and interests fall into place. Even though she never could have known this opportunity would come along, it was perfect for Sally’s background as a sports-loving physicist. 

It was an ad. NASA was recruiting new astronauts to fly in the space shuttle program. And for the first time, they were accepting applications from women. Sally had expected to get a job as a college teacher. But the chance to be an astronaut doesn’t come along every day, and Sally was excited by the possibility of actually visiting space, after studying the stars and planets and gazing up at Orion on so many nights. And, astronauts need to be in great physical shape too. All her years of playing tennis would be an advantage too. 

NASA was a bit overdue in sending women to space. In fact, all the astronauts until this time had been white men, mostly Air Force pilots. Russia had sent a woman to space in 1963! Now, in addition to recruiting pilots, NASA was opening the astronaut program to anyone with training in science or engineering.  They got thousands of applications! Out of all those applicants, Sally and five other women were chosen to train as astronauts! Not only were the first women chosen to be part of the space shuttle program, the class of 35 men and women included the first Asian American and African American astronauts.

Sally at NASA

Sally began her training in 1979. NASA was impressed by Sally. She was athletic and strong, committed and smart. Years of playing competitive tennis had taught her how to keep cool under pressure. 

But even though Sally had the right stuff to be an astronaut, there was a lot to learn! She had to know space shuttle systems inside and out. She learned about geology, oceanography, and computer science, since she would need to perform all sorts of experiments in space. The astronaut candidates learned to fly supersonic jets, though most of them wouldn’t actually need to fly the shuttle–NASA still used professional pilots for that–it was important to know how it worked in case there was ever an emergency. 

Off to Space for Sally Ride!

Finally, in 1982, after years of training and working on projects and shuttle missions from the ground, Sally got the call that all astronauts are eager for. NASA had assigned her to a mission. She would go to space in 1983 as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Challenger. 

Sally would have a whole year to prepare for the mission. As part of her work on the ground for NASA, Sally had helped design a robotic arm that would move things like satellites in and out of the space shuttle’s cargo bay. On her mission, Sally would use the arm to place a satellite outside in space. It would fly alongside the shuttle for a few hours, taking pictures and doing experiments. Then, Sally would use the robotic arm to grab the satellite and pull it back into the shuttle.

It was an exciting project for Sally, but she was disappointed to find that news reporters weren’t very interested in it. Instead, they always asked her questions about what it would be like for a woman in space. Would she wear makeup in space? Would she be able to have children after going into space? Would she cry if she made a mistake? Understandably, Sally found these questions annoying at best, even insulting. Why couldn’t reporters ask her about the actual mission–the science she’d be doing, or the amazing robotic arm she’d designed–instead of obsessing over her gender? 

But Sally kept her focus on training and ignored the rude questions. She made sure she knew every step of every task she needed to do during launch, in space, and on landing. On June 18th, 1983, Sally was ready to lift off! 

The mission was a success: the crew performed experiments, and the robotic arm worked beautifully. But besides conducting experiments and gaining experience in space, Sally realized something far more profound. As she looked out the space shuttle window for the first time, she noticed something that astonished her: 

“…it looked as if someone had taken a royal blue crayon and just traced along the Earth’s horizon. And then I realized that that blue line, that really thin royal blue line, was Earth’s atmosphere, and that was all there was of it. And it’s so clear from that perspective how fragile our existence is.” 

Challenger Mission

Sally flew on another mission two years later, again on Challenger. Sally hoped she’d be able to fly again after her second mission, but in 1986 a terrible tragedy threw her hopes, and the whole shuttle program, into doubt. The space shuttle Challenger, which Sally had flown on twice, exploded a few minutes after lift-off. Seven astronauts were killed, including some Sally had trained with. Sally was devastated, but she was also one of the best people to help figure out what went wrong. NASA canceled all its space shuttle missions for years while Sally and a committee of other experts investigated the accident. They found that cold weather that morning in Florida caused a part to break during the flight. 

By this time, Sally realized she would probably never fly on another mission. She stayed at NASA another year after the investigation, helping them plan for the future. But in 1987, she realized it was time to leave. 

Sally went back to Stanford University to work as a physics professor. She also reconnected with a childhood friend, Tam O’Shaugnessy. The two fell in love, and would spend the next 27 years together. Tam was also a scientist–a biologist–and she loved sports and exercise too. Sally and Tam also shared a passion for encouraging children, especially girls, to explore science and technology. They wrote books and started a foundation together that offered science summer camps and science festivals. Sally even started a program that let kids in middle school control a satellite launched into space on the shuttle, taking pictures of earth from hundreds of miles above the ground. 

Sally’s Death

In 2011, Sally learned she had pancreatic cancer. After battling the disease for over a year, she passed away at home in California. A year later, President Obama awarded Sally a Presidential Medal of Honor for her accomplishments. Tam accepted the award on her behalf.

People change their minds sometimes about what they want to do. New dreams take hold. But the most important thing to do if you want to make a dream come true is to act. Find out what you need to do to actually make that dream a reality and do it! You may find that you don’t like the doing as much as the dream, just like Sally Ride did with pro tennis. But, like Sally, if you try enough things, eventually you’ll find the right thing for you. And you never know when an opportunity will come along that requires your unique combination of talents, skills, and knowledge. So keep exploring!

Sources

https://rvsallyride.ucsd.edu/legacy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride

Abawi, Atia (2021) She Persisted: Sally Ride. Philomel Books, New York.

Macy, Sue (2014) Sally Ride: Life on a Mission. Aladdin, New York.

The post History of Sally Ride for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Close your eyes and imagine you are hiking through a thick jungle. You use a sharp machete to cut away the vines and leaves blocking your path. You step through deep mud and cross a busy stream, then cut through another wall of trees until you reach the clearing and see it — the tallest stone pyramid you’ve ever seen. You gaze and wonder at its size and move toward it touching the intricate carvings in the stone. From the symbols, you know you’ve discovered a temple of one of the great civilizations of the ancient world, the Mayas…

Who were these ingenious people? How did they build these gigantic pyramids? And what caused their advanced civilization to suddenly disappear? Where did the Mayas go?

The earliest Mayan villages started in 1,800 B.C., almost 4 thousand years ago! They lived in what is now the region of Mexico and Central America, which includes countries like Guatemala and Belize — also called Mesoamerica. The climate there is tropical, which means it’s filled with dense jungles and is very wet like a rainforest. The Mayas were very skilled farmers and grew corn, beans, and squash. This allowed their communities to grow larger. Over the next 2000 years, the Maya civilization slowly began to grow further into the highlands of Mesoamerica.

From 250 A.D. to 900 A.D. the Maya civilization was at its strongest also called the Classic Period. This was their Golden Age, their best years as they grew and expanded and became more advanced. During this time the Maya civilization included over 40 cities, and each city included anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 people, totaling over 2 million — which is huge for a civilization at that time! 

Each city-state was independent of the other, had its own kings, priests, and other rulers, but was very similar in other ways. They had the same language, religion, and culture. Usually, these different Maya cities got along and traded and worked together but sometimes they went to battle over different problems.

In order for civilizations to thrive, they have to be able to share resources with each other. Resources are things like food, building materials, and other items people want and need to buy. Sometimes they are crafted goods like jewelry or nice clothing. The Mayas made trade easier by building roads between each of the cities. These highways were called “white ways” because they were covered in stucco or plaster that made them easier to travel on. With better trade routes, cities moved goods faster and were able to prosper as they worked together. 

One of the cities that did the most trading is one we now call Tulum. It was built on cliffs along the Caribbean Sea and protected by huge walls. The walls are 16-24 feet thick in some places to keep out invaders. Long ago, Mayas from all over Mesoamerica came to Tulum by land, river, and sea to trade with each other. We know this because of all of the artifacts which have been found there that come from a very distance. These artifacts include gold, feathers, and copper items. The ancient people called this beautiful city “Zama” which means “Dawn” because it faces the sunrise. The city leaders lived inside the walled city, while the peasants and other citizens lived and worked outside the city. In the center of Tulum is a pyramid called El Castillo which served as a temple for the city’s priests. Tulum was one of the last cities to be lived in by Mayas who were there even when Spanish explorers arrived in the 1500s.     

In their largest cities like Tikal, the Mayans built gigantic buildings of stone. Some of these were temples, others were palaces and plazas where the city people met together to buy and sell and hold sporting events. Their favorite sport was a game called ulama, where the players bounced a rubber ball back and forth across the court. Ulama was very tricky because players weren’t allowed to use their hands or feet, but instead used their knee and hip, and other body parts to hit the ball.

The step pyramid-shaped temples that towered over the city were magnificent and many of them can be visited today. Chichen Itza includes one of the largest of the pyramids in Mexico. Copan and Palenque, along with Tulum, are among the most visited ruins today. 

Anciently, the Mayas used these temples to worship their gods. Some of these gods were  Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent God, who ruled the winds and water and who they believed created humans and taught them the rules of law, literacy, medicine, architecture, farming, and how to run a civilization. Then there was Itzamna, God of the Sky, the founder of Maya culture and protector of the sciences, such as astrology and writing. Ix Chel was the Mayan Moon Goddess who represented love and marriage. The Maya priests made offerings to these gods of food and other objects to stay in their good favor.  

The Mayas were also very gifted artists. They decorated their pyramids and other stone buildings with beautiful pictures and hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are symbols that represent words and their ruins which you can still see today are covered in them. They made beautiful jewelry using shells from the ocean, bright green feathers from the quetzal bird, and precious stones like gold and jade. The Mayas were also very skilled at math, which they used to build their magnificent temples. From the temples, their priests watched the sun, moon, and stars, so were advanced astronomers. Their buildings were often designed with their understanding of astronomy in mind. For example, the Pyramid of El Castillo has 365 steps to represent the different days of the year. The Maya calendar is still known today for its accuracy.

By the end of the Classic Period, something began to change in the Maya Civilization that slowly caused their power and influence to slow down. Over the next few hundred years, their cities became smaller and there were fewer people, the population declined. No one knows for sure what happened to the Mayan Empire, but some archeologists think it was because they had used up all of the land and other precious resources. Others also think there may have been a drought, which means not enough water, which people needed to survive. There may also have been fighting between the different cities and its powerful families which caused the downfall of the Maya Civilization. But even though the cities were empty, the Maya people spread throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and the surrounding area, turning to other ways of life like farming and fishing and living in smaller villages instead. 

In 1839, an American traveler and writer named John Lloyd Stephens visited some of the Maya sites with a friend. Together, they wrote and sketched the amazing cities and ruins and sparked interest in the ancient Mayan people and their civilization. Archeologists visited to research the sites and try to better understand who the Maya were. Others deciphered the hieroglyphics to understand their history. People all over the world finally learned about this advanced civilization that once ruled Mesoamerica. 

Today, the descendants of the Maya still live in Central America, which includes parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. 

If you get the chance, be sure to look up documentaries about the Maya or books at your local library. You can also find many amazing photos of their cities and buildings which still stand today.

The post History of Maya Civilization for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Actually, that’s not quite true. They’re not really stars at all, but meteors, or bits of rock that come from space and fall through the Earth’s atmosphere. They go so fast that they burn up and create that thrilling streak of light as they fall. Usually, the pieces are small, like a pebble, and the streak is about as bright as a normal star. But sometimes, if the rock is bigger, it’s much brighter. If it’s very bright, it’s called a fireball! Most meteors burn up high above the Earth, but about 3 thousand fall all the way to Earth every year. When this happens, it’s called a meteorite.  Most meteorites land in the ocean, so you don’t need to worry about them. 

Occasionally, meteorites have crashed into cars or houses, but it’s extremely rare for one to hit a person. In fact, only one person in recorded history was ever hit by a meteorite. Her name was Ann Hodges, and the only injury she had was a bruise on her leg. She did get into a legal fight with her landlady about which of them owned the rock though. Her neighbor was luckier: he found a piece of the same meteorite, and was able to sell it. He made enough money to buy a car and a house!

People have been noticing meteors and meteorites for thousands of years, and they’ve been around almost since the beginning of our solar system. Some of the earliest recorded observations are from China, over 2,500 years ago! People in ancient China, Korea, and Japan wrote very detailed and accurate descriptions of meteor showers and fireballs.

But of course, people didn’t always know what either thing was. And when people don’t know what something is, you can bet they’ll make up an interesting story to explain it. In Eastern Europe, some cultures believed that meteors were snake-like dragon creatures called zmek or zmey.  These creatures would grow so large as they got older, that the Earth couldn’t hold them anymore, and they would fly up to live among the stars. In Estonia, people used to think meteors were hot stones thrown to Earth by demons.

Many cultures thought meteors were linked to birth and death–either a soul falling to Earth to be born as a new baby, or a person dying somewhere and shooting to heaven. The ancient Romans thought a meteor shower signaled the death of Queen Cleopatra. And of course, some people believe that if you wish on one, your wish will come true!

Some of the first people to try to explain meteors as part of nature, instead of as magical or supernatural, were the Ancient Greeks. The philosopher Aristotle thought that the Earth’s atmosphere contained both air and fire, which would sometimes ignite in an area high in the sky, causing the streaks of light we know as meteors. There really wasn’t any evidence to back this up, but the idea stuck around for centuries because no one really had a better one. 

Meteorites–the meteors that fall all the way to Earth–were even harder for people to explain. In fact, for centuries, many people believed they didn’t really exist, that they were just legends! It is less common for people to actually witness meteorite impacts, so when they were observed, serious scientists and thinkers dismissed them as fakes. After all, rocks seemed no more likely to fall from the sky than milk or wool…both of which people also claimed to have seen falling from the sky. A few scientists speculated that maybe the falling rocks were from volcanoes, but for a long time, very few suspected they might be from beyond Earth. 

Our knowledge of both meteors and meteorites finally began to improve in the 18th century. Edmund Halley, a famous astronomer who discovered an even-more-famous comet, suggested in 1688 that meteors came from space, but later changed his mind. Other scientists around this time explored the idea, measuring the height and speed of meteors and finding they were too high and too fast to have come from Earth’s surface or even atmosphere.  They didn’t manage to convince many people, but they were slowly chipping away at Aristotle’s ideas, which were now over 2,000 years old.

Several scientists working at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century would finally do the work that convinced the world that meteorites and meteors were both chunks of rock that came from outer space.  In 1791, Ernst Chladni, a German physicist, first heard from a friend about a fireball seen in the sky over Gottingen. Chladni was captivated by the account, and began to research other stories about rocks falling from the sky. Remember, at this time, many people dismissed the idea of rocks falling from the sky as superstition or legend. But Chladni noticed that all the stories shared certain details, even though they happened at very different times and in different places around the world. This made Chladni think that they couldn’t have been made up. They were just too similar.

Chladni wrote about his ideas, saying that he suspected the rocks people had seen were from outside Earth’s atmosphere, or outer space. He even proposed that they were leftover from the process that formed the planets in our solar system, which is true! But people still didn’t believe him–even the friend who told him about the Gottingen fireball was doubtful. 

Still, other scientists began to study these rocks that supposedly fell from the sky. A British chemist named Edward Howard analyzed a meteorite that fell near a cottage in Wold, England. He discovered that it was made out of chemical elements that weren’t often found on Earth’s surface. He also noted that the mysterious falling stones from different parts of the world were made out of the same kinds of substances. 

It wouldn’t be long before another scientist would finally provide enough evidence–and in the right way–-to put any doubts to rest. Jean-Baptiste Biot was a physicist with a sense of adventure. He went on the first hot-air balloon ride done in order to collect scientific data. In 1803, Biot heard about a rain of rocks–over 3,000!–in L’Aigle France, and he went himself to investigate. 

Biot was very thorough in his investigation. He traveled to L’Aigle to find out as much as he could first hand about this reported rock shower. Just like Edward Howard, Biot noticed that these rocks were made out of different minerals than other rocks in the area, and they weren’t like volcanic rocks either. He studied other meteorites and noticed that they all had more in common with each other than with other rocks in the regions where they were found.

Biot, unlike Chladni, also interviewed many eye-witnesses to the fireball and rock shower. Finally, he wrote an exciting piece about the event. This time, both the scientific community and popular media took notice.  He said that his research was motivated “not by jealous rivalry, but by the noble love of truth.” Very moving words, right? Pretty soon, scientists–and the regular people–began to acknowledge that he was right. 

Since the early 19th century, scientists have learned a lot more about meteors and meteor showers. An American scientist named Denison Olmstead observed a meteor shower in November 1833 that he described as “more extensive and magnificent than any similar one hitherto recorded.” Olmstead began to study meteors as a result of this memorable experience. He showed that some meteor showers, including the one he observed, happen on a regular schedule and can be predicted. The one he saw is now called the Leonids meteor shower, and you can see it every November, plus there are several others throughout the year. Olmstead also suggested that these showers are caused by comets. Comets are balls of ice and rock, so when they pass close to the sun, pieces begin to melt and break apart.  If Earth passes through the trail of debris, we get an amazing show of meteors!

If you ever get the chance, you should definitely try to see a meteor shower someday. And now, you’ll be able to appreciate the long history of our relationship with these shooting stars, and just how long and how many people it took to figure out what they really are. You have to stay up late (or wake up very early) and be in a very dark area to get the best show, but the chance to see dozens of meteors in the course of a few hours is worth the trouble! Many websites publish calendars showing when and where you can see them. Until then, you can look out your window for a few minutes each night and appreciate the moon, stars, and planets, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll catch a streak of light in the corner of your eye. Don’t forget to make a wish, just in case!

Sources

Avilin, T. “Meteor Beliefs Project: East European meteor folk-beliefs.” WGN, Journal of the International Meteor Organization, vol. 35, no. 5, p. 113-116 (2007)

Biot, Jean-Baptiste. 1803. Relation d’un voyage fait dans le département de l’Orne, pour constater la réalité d’un météore observé à l’Aigle le 6 floréal an 11. Baudoin impr, University of Lausanne. https://books.google.com/books?id=JPwTAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Denison Olmstead, “Observations on the Meteors of November 13th, 1833.” The American Journal of Science and the Arts. 18 June 1791-13 May 1859. 

https://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/bios/pn0001301_bio.html

Eschner, Kat. “For the Only Person Ever Hit by a Meteorite, the Real Trouble Began Later.” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 30, 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-hit-meteorite-real-trouble-began-later-180961238/ 

Eschner, Kat. “Scientists Didn’t Believe in Meteorites Until 1803.” Smithsonian Magazine, Apr. 26, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1803-rain-rocks-helped-establish-existence-meteorites-180963017/

MacDonald, Eve. “How Ancient Cultures Explained Comets and Meteors.“ The Conversation, Aug. 7, 2018. https://theconversation.com/how-ancient-cultures-explained-comets-and-meteors-100982

Turner, Bambi. “10 Superstitions about Stars.” How Stuff Works, Apr 16, 2021. https://science.howstuffworks.com/10-superstitions-about-stars.htm

Williams, Iwan P.  “The origin and evolution of meteor showers and meteoroid streams” Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 52, Issue 2, April 2011, Pages 2.20–2.26, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4004.2011.52220.x

Jean-Baptist Biot. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Biot

Meteors and Meteorites. NASA. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/meteors-and-meteorites/overview/?page=0&per_page=40&order=id+asc&search=&condition_1=meteor_shower%3Abody_type

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Today we’re going to learn about a place that has been a mystery to people all over the world. Places like this one become mysterious because not much is known about what goes on there, so people start to imagine what might happen there and share their ideas until the place becomes more and more intriguing to those who don’t know about it. This particular place is called Area 51. Area 51 is one section in a large territory of land located in the deserts of Nevada in the United States, which is now officially called the Nevada National Security Site. Area 51 is owned by the government and only the people who work there are allowed to know what happens on the base. For a very long time, no one outside of the base knew what was going on there, but in recent years more of its history has become known. So in this episode we’re going to talk about some of the histories we do know about Area 51 and also the things we don’t know and for that reason have become mysterious.

After World War 2 ended, the Cold War began. The Cold War was a conflict between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union (not Russia). It was called a Cold War because there was very little fighting and instead lots of spying. Both countries were worried the other country would use nuclear bombs, which were invented during World War 2, on each other. The United States needed an area for testing nuclear bombs that were far from humans, so they used the land in Nevada and called it the Nevada Testing Site. Some of these bombs were tested above ground but many of them were tested below ground. They drilled holes deep into the earth and dug tunnels to place the bombs into before detonating them. They did this because the fallout from nuclear bombs above ground can be very harmful when it moves through the air. I did a little research using Google Maps and today you can still see the craters created by the testing of these bombs at the Nevada Testing Site.

So to keep an eye on each other’s nuclear bombs, the United States and Russia trained spies to live in each other’s countries, trying to figure out what their enemy would do next. Another word for spying is espionage. The agency in the United States for gathering intelligence was called the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA. Intelligence is information about other countries, such as Russia at the time. Besides just sending out agents, the CIA had the idea to use jets to photograph possible nuclear weapons in Russia. These jets would need to fly VERY high to avoid enemy radar and have very powerful cameras to take photos of the land below. And the program to develop the spy plane would have to be TOP SECRET. This means no one could know about it besides the people working on the spy plane. 

The new spy plane was called the U-2 and once the work started on it, the designers needed a place to test it out. The chief designer of the U-2, named Kelly Johnson, was flying over Nevada one day when he saw the flat desert and mountains of Area 51 and thought it would be perfect for testing out his new spy plane. Soon, work started on the airfield and runways around Groom Lake at the section of the Nevada Test Site named Area 51. Airplane hangers to keep the spy plane out of view. Fences were added all around Area 51 so no one but those working on the U-2 spy plane could see what was being done. Guards were posted at all of the entrances to make sure no one entered the base. Anyone who worked at Area 51 had to swear an oath of secrecy to promise that they’d never speak about the work they were doing. Houses were built for the people who would live there. Soon, the area around Groom Lake was a small city where engineers and pilots could live and work and test the spy plane. A gym, movie theater, and baseball diamond were even built to make life more enjoyable at Area 51. Kelly Johnson even called it “Paradise Ranch” to attract people to work on the top secret projects.

During the day, engineers worked on the aircraft. Then at night, highly trained pilots flew the advanced aircraft high around the Nevada desert to test them and make sure they were working well. The U-2 spy plane was black, had long slender wings and could fly up to 70,000 feet, which was extremely high for a jet at the time. Testing the U-2 was very dangerous and the pilots who flew it had to be very skilled and brave to take it up again and again until it was ready to use. Many talented engineers also had to work long hours to make sure the U-2 could fly high, take photos, and not be detected by enemy radar.

Before the U-2 was put into service, the next top-secret project began on a new spy plane that would be designed to fly even higher and faster than the U-2. It was called the A-12 Oxcart. It was long, black, sleek, and eventually able to fly Mach 3, which is 2,000 miles per hour and faster than the speed of sound. It still holds the record of flying at 85,000 feet, which is incredibly high for a jet. The A-12 was also the precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird, which looked very similar.

So as you can imagine, when jets like the U-2, the A-12, and other top-secret aircraft flew at night, they moved at incredible speeds; and when their fuel burned it created bright streaks across the sky. This made people living nearby Area 51 very suspicious about what was going on. They saw objects that were moving higher and faster than anything they’d ever seen. Also, when passenger jet pilots flew nearby, they saw objects moving high above them and very fast. Stories started to emerge from people on the ground and in the air who saw these objects. Science Fiction was becoming popular in comic books, movies, and TV. Could the objects people were seeing be spacecraft from another world? They started calling these “Unidentified Flying Objects” or UFOs. Another word they used to describe beings from other planets was “extraterrestrials.” They wondered if Area 51 had UFOs.

Of course, it didn’t help that Area 51 was so top secret. Everything was classified, which means not public knowledge, and everyone working there was flown in by plane and had to receive top-secret clearance. You can imagine what kind of rumors started!

All the while, new projects continued at Area 51 and the surrounding test site in the deserts of Nevada which included the D-21 Tagboard, one of the first aircraft flown without a human pilot. You might know these as drones but officially called UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Later, UAVs like the Predator, Sentinel, and Reaper drones were tested at Area 51. These are now in use by the military today and used in places like the Middle East. A pilot on a base in Nevada flies these drones remotely in place all over the world using satellite communication. There has also been debate about whether aircraft like this should be used in other countries and when they should be used.

Over time, the history of the aircraft tested at Area 51 and nearby became public knowledge. In 2013, the CIA even shared documents about the work done there. The documents about the U-2, the A-12, and F-117 became declassified. Later, it became known that astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin who completed the first Apollo Moon mission trained there. They put on their spacesuits and walked around the desert as if they were on the moon.

Of course, today whatever is being tested and created at Area 51 is once again top secret, so we can only guess what is happening there. Because it’s unknown it becomes mysterious to those who don’t know and people like to use their imaginations to think about what might be going on there. Like we said before, the base is guarded by fences and soldiers on patrol so currently only people with top-secret permission can go in. It’s likely that the most advanced aircraft is being tested there and things we won’t know about until they are revealed at a future date.  That said, you can look at Area 51 on Google Maps, and my kids and I had fun looking at the different airfields, mountains, roads, and testing sites. And we do admit it’s fun to guess at what might be going on there today.

So, back to UFOs and extraterrestrials since it can be such an intriguing topic. Many people wonder with our universe being so big, there should be other life out there in the galaxy. And if so, why haven’t we made contact with this other intelligent life yet. There are a lot of questions here which are fun to explore. The SETI Institute is one organization with the goal to find extraterrestrial life in the universe. SETI stands for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They use powerful radio telescopes to observe faraway places in the galaxy that might contain intelligent life. They search for planets that might be habitable, which means be the right temperature and have water. 

At times, the government and military have also done studies on UFOs and intelligent life that may have visited earth. Project Blue Book was the name of one of these studies. They interviewed witnesses and researched what might explain what people were seeing. In most cases, what people saw corresponded to aircraft flying in the area or other explainable things. 

One of the most famous UFO stories in the United States happened in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 when something crashed in the desert there. With all of the talk of UFOs familiar with Science Fiction, the newspaper was quick to report it was a UFO. Did they do this just to get people to buy their newspapers? Or did someone see something that made them think it was a spacecraft from another planet? The military quickly came to the scene to clean up the crashed aircraft and this led to people speculating that whatever did crash in Roswell was top secret. Stories about what happened at Roswell then began to spread and ever since it has been a topic of much debate. Later, the military said it was in fact a top-secret project, a high-flying weather balloon used to spy on enemies far below. During World War 2 they hoped to use it to listen for bombs exploding to know where the enemy might be testing nuclear bombs. But as you can imagine the rumors still abound about what happened at Roswell, New Mexico. Later, people wondered if what was being tested at Area 51 was connected to the crash at Roswell. Did the government know something about UFOs that the general public didn’t? Were they testing their own UFOs? We do know they were testing top-secret aircraft like the U-2 and A-12. It can be fun to speculate and wonder but the fact remains that there is still much that we don’t know about Area 51 and the surrounding Nevada Test Site. 

What is being tested at Area 51 today? The best guess is the same work of advanced aircraft that can fly fast and is stealthy, which means avoiding being detected by enemy radar. There may also be advanced weapons systems being tested which the military is always developing. If you try and visit Area 51 today you’ll only see lots of “No Trespassing” signs and surveillance cameras, but interestingly, people interested in UFOs like to drive down the road now called the Extraterrestrial Highway and all of the shops, hotels, and other businesses which are UFO and Extraterrestrial themed and which sell t-shirts, books, and other souvenirs.

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Have you ever sat outside on a dark night and stared up at the stars, wondering what’s out there? It’s not always possible in the city, but if you get away from the lights, on a very dark and clear night, you can see thousands of stars. People have watched the stars and wondered about them for as long as there have been people. What are they made of? How many are there? How far away are they? Why do they seem to move to different parts of the sky? Why do they twinkle? 

As other people have looked up at the stars like you, they have dreamed about visiting these far away places. As a child, Mae Jemison was one of them. Mae lived in a city, but during the summers as a child she went to camp. There, outside the city, it was dark enough to see the stars, and like you she wondered about other planets and stars and space. Then, she began to dream about what it would be like to go there.  And as Mae grew older she didn’t stop dreaming of going to space. 

Mae Jemison was born in 1956 in Alabama. At this time, Alabama still had many laws that were unfair to African Americans like Mae’s family. So, when she was three years old, her parents moved the family to the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. They thought they would be able to find better work for Mae’s mother and give their children a better education there. Her father was a roofer and carpenter, and her mother was a school teacher. 

The 1960s were an exciting time for space exploration. These years began with the first humans being launched into space! Yuri Gagarin, a Russian astronaut, was first and then Alan Shepherd, an American, was also launched into space. These years ended with humans landing on the moon for the first time: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. 

But, as Mae watched all of these exciting events unfold, what she didn’t see in the space programs were people like herself or her family: African Americans and women. She followed every detail of the Apollo missions that brought humans to the moon. She enjoyed stargazing and imagining what it would be like to be in space. She went to the library and read everything she could find about space and science. But Mae wanted to see women a part of these programs, too. Still, Mae didn’t stop thinking and dreaming about space. On TV she found inspiration in the sci-fi show Star Trek, where one of the crew was a black woman doing important work as part of a starship crew.  And, her parents encouraged her to explore her interests. She studied earth history, chemistry, dance, and theater all in addition to space.

Growing up, Mae once told her teacher that she wanted to be a scientist. The teacher responded by asking if she meant to say “nurse.” Although being a nurse is a very important job, Mae stood firm and corrected her teacher, saying she really did want to be a scientist. She wasn’t about to have someone tell her what she should be. 

Later, other grown-ups encouraged Mae, such as a middle school teacher who helped her research different space and science related jobs. Different people in your life may encourage or discourage you, but you should never be afraid to say what you think or pursue a subject that interests you! Be sure to pay the most attention to people who care about you and encourage you and build you up! 

In college, Mae studied chemical engineering, but was also involved in dance and theater productions. In fact, she even considered trying to become a dancer! But Mae decided to continue studying science and went to medical school. From there, she studied in Cuba and Kenya, and also worked in a refugee camp in Thailand. A refugee camp is where people fleeing a war go to be safe, and Cambodia had just ended a long civil war. After medical school, Mae went on to work for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia. She speaks Swahili, Japanese, Russian, and, of course, English.

But through all this, Mae never stopped thinking about her dream to go to space. In 1985 she applied to the space program led by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Association. To her joy, they accepted her, making Mae the first African American woman to enter the astronaut training program! During her training, Mae had to learn astronomy, engineering, space shuttle systems and many other subjects that help astronauts do their jobs. She trained physically, which can be very hard on the body. Astronauts must be very strong and healthy, because being in zero gravity puts a lot of stress on the human body. Zero gravity means you are floating because there is little to no gravity in space. One of Mae’s obstacles was also a fear of heights! Do you have a fear of heights? If so, Mae can relate to you. We all have fears but this was Mae’s. She had t o overcome her fear of heights to complete parachute training, but later said there was no question that it was worth it. She either had to face her fears, or not go to space. 

After training, Mae spent a few years helping with space shuttle launches at Kennedy Space Center. Then in September 1992, Mae joined six other astronauts on the space shuttle named Endeavor. Her job was a mission specialist, in some ways like her hero from the Star Trek TV show! She spent eight days in space. There, she performed experiments such as the effects of weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew. 

Not only did her childhood dream come true, Mae became the first African American woman in space. She took with her reminders of people who had been excluded in the past: a portrait of Judith Jamison, a famous African American dancer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; a west African statue; and a photo of Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license. If you remember, we learned about Bessie Coleman in a past episode! 

Mae left NASA in 1993, but is alive today and has continued to work on space-related projects. She started a camp for youth who are interested in space, and wrote a book for young people about her life. She often talks to young people who are interested in careers in space and science. She tells them to find a career they really enjoy and are good at, but also learn about lots of different subjects. Mae certainly followed her own advice by studying dance, medicine, and engineering, and then learning all about space science and shuttle systems in her astronaut training. 

Mae hasn’t stopped working on big, ambitious goals for space travel either. She leads a project called 100 Year Starship. The goal of this project is to make travel to other star systems possible within the next 100 years! Isn’t that amazing! This is a huge challenge! So far we’ve only sent people as far as Earth’s moon, and unmanned probes to the other planets in our solar system.  Going to another solar system would take thousands of times longer. That’s because distances in space are vast. At current rocket speeds, travel to the closest star outside our solar system would take 70 thousand years! It would be nice not to have to wait so long for something that exciting, don’t you think? 

The 100 Year Starship project is exploring new technologies that could speed things up. They are also looking at ways to solve other problems that interstellar travellers would face on their trip, such as having enough food and energy, keeping people healthy, tools to fix things that break, and making sure everyone is happy and entertained!

The vastness of space has inspired us to dream about the stars since the first humans looked up at the night sky. They wondered what was out there, made up stories and watched closely to try to explain it. The unknown can be scary, but it’s also the thing that motivates us to learn and challenge ourselves to do bigger and better things. We want to know what’s out there, to make discoveries. We don’t know what we’ll find, but as Mae Jemison learned after her mission to space, we’re already a part of it. We are part of the universe, just like the stars and moon, the planets and asteroids. So it’s only natural that we want to explore it. 

Many people didn’t believe Americans could get a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, a project that President John F. Kennedy proposed in 1962. But as the young Mae Jemison watched and tracked those missions from the South Side of Chicago, she and the world saw that enormous, seemingly impossible goals can be reached. They are reached by many people working together with a common purpose and vision. Mae Jemison helped show that race and gender do not matter when it comes to achieving these big goals. What matters is having passion, purpose, and determination. These are the kind of people like you who will build a better future for our world and beyond it in the stars. 

Sources

https://100yss.org/mission/challenges

https://www.biography.com/astronaut/mae-c-jemison

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mae-jemison

https://www.today.com/video/dr-mae-c-jemison-on-breaking-barriers-as-first-black-woman-in-space-101574725699

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/545.html 

https://www.startrek.com/database_article/jemison

Jemison, Mae. 2001. Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from my life. Scholastic Press. New York.

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Meet Mars Perseverance Rover

Watch NASA engineers prepare Perseverance for launch

Learn more about the SpaceX Starship for it’s 2022 Mars Mission

On certain nights, if you go outside and look up into the sky you may see a very bright light. It may look like a star, but if you’re looking at the right place and at the right time, you can see the planet Mars. Mars is special because it’s one of the closest planets to Earth. It’s also more similar to Earth than any of the other planets in our Solar System. It has a surface you can walk on. And with the right tools, people could someday live on Mars. Humans have always been interested in Mars and have explored in more than any other planet. 

Because of its color Mars is often called the “Red Planet.” It’s the fourth planet from the Sun and Earth is the third. Because it’s further from the Sun than Earth, it’s very cold on Mars. Like most planets, Mars is very big, but it’s about six times smaller than Earth. It has two small moons named Phobos and Deimos. The surface of Mars is rocky and covered in red-brown colored dust. It’s extremely cold and dry. There is no flowing water on the surface of Mars and no plants or animals live there. However, there is evidence that millions of years ago water flowed on Mars, but over time it froze or evaporated.

Even though there is no life on Mars, it has some amazing geographical features, which include a mountain and volcano called Olympus Mons, which is more than twice the height of Mount Everest and the second-largest known mountain in the Solar System. The Red Planet also has a gigantic canyon called Vallis Marineris, which is 10 times longer than the Grand Canyon and 6 times deeper. If it was on earth Vallis Marineris would stretch all the way across the United States.    

For thousands of years, humans have been interested in Mars. Ancient astronomers such as the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians and Chinese watched Mars in the sky with wonder. The Romans named it “Mars” after the god of war, because it was red, the color of blood. In 1877 when Mars was closest to Earth, the Italian Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli used a telescope to draw a detailed map of Mars. As telescopes improved humans learned more and more about the Red Planet. They wondered if it had planets and animals like earth and they dreamed of visiting it someday. Science fiction authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined it having people and wrote adventures about what happened there in his book A Princess of Mars.     

The first attempts to explore Mars were made by the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. The Soviet Union was the name of Russia and other nearby countries at that time. They launched 9 different unmanned rockets in hopes of reaching Mars. Unmanned means no humans are on the rocket. Most of the first spacecraft never made it to the Red Planet, but the Mars 3 lander did land on the surface of Mars, and the Mars 5 lander landed and was able to send back some information before it stopped working. 

In 1964 NASA, the United State’s National Air and Space Administration launched Mariner 4 and Mariner 5 to learn more about Mars. The first spacecraft failed, but the second one made the 7 month trip to the Red Planet. When it arrived it took pictures from space and sent them back to Earth. It was the first time humans saw the surface of another planet! It was amazing! They saw craters and learned that living on Mars would be harder than they expected. More spacecraft were sent and took new pictures of Mars. With each visit, they learned more about our neighboring planet.

The next goal was to land a vehicle on Mars so it could take close up pictures and samples of the Martian air and dirt. Remember, that all of these spacecraft and landers were unmanned, they were robots and didn’t have people on them. They were all controlled by people on Earth. Sending a human to Mars would be much more challenging and dangerous. 

In 1975 NASA sent two more landers to Mars and called them Viking 1 and Viking 2. They landed successfully and sent back color pictures of the surface of Mars. They showed red, rocky land. The Viking landers also learned more about what life would be like on Mars.

Next came the Mars Pathfinder mission, which landed again and this time included a rover. A rover is a robot with wheels and arms that drives around the surface of the Red Planet. It can take pictures and samples of the dirt and air. Then it uses radio communication to send all of this information across space and back to Earth.

Other missions sent more probes to fly over Mars and take pictures. Then in 2012 the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars and took even better pictures and samples to prepare for future missions. 

While researching this episode, I learned that this month, July 2020, NASA plans to launch its new and improved rover called Perseverance . If it launches this month it would land on Mars in February and send back whatever it learns. One of the coolest things about the Perseverance rover is it will also have a small helicopter on it that will detach and fly around and explore and take pictures from the sky. 

Also, just this last week China launched its first spacecraft and lander to explore Mars. Mars exploration is really exciting lately! I’m look forward to hear what they find out next. 

The next big step with Mars will be sending humans to live and do research there. Elon Musk is a tech billionaire and visionary who has made sending humans to live on Mars the mission of his company, SpaceX. His goal is to send humans there by 2022. This is called colonization. It’s a big goal, but he and his engineers have accomplished amazing things in the past. He also started Tesla, which makes the famous electric cars.

In 2020 if SpaceX is ready, their mission to Mars would begin by launching their Starship spacecraft attached to their Super Heavy rocket. It would probably take 6 months to get from Earth to Mars, but the engineers at SpaceX are working to make it faster. Two more Starships would launch the same year. If SpaceX reaches the Red Planet they’ll have to be prepared to live there. First, humans will need oxygen, because Mars’s air does not have oxygen like Earth’s. They will bring some of their own oxygen and also use special machines to pull other elements like Carbon Dioxide out of the air and convert it into oxygen. They’ll also need water. One way to do this is to dig up the soil and extract water from deep in the ground or from frozen ice caps. They will also need to wear special suits because its air doesn’t protect them from the Sun’s radiation — and radiation is very dangerous to the body. The Red Planet is also extremely cold. Their homes and suits will need to keep them warm. These habitats will also have the oxygen and air pressure the body needs to survive. And  of course humans need to eat, so they will bring some of their own food at first, but if they want to live there for a long time they’ll need to figure out how to grow plants in Martian soil, so they can eat them. 

Many teams are already preparing for life on Mars by living in habitats in the desert on Earth. Living alone will be a challenge and all of the astronauts will have to work as a team and find ways to get along with each other. The goal to send people to Mars is a big one, but humans have done amazing things in the past as they think big and work together.

Would you like to visit a faraway place like the space station or the Moon or Mars someday? What kind of skills would you need to survive in a place like that? If so, what can you do now to prepare to explore like an astronaut or create new devices like the engineers at NASA and SpaceX? 

Building things requires a knowledge of math and science. It also requires creativity. There are a few ways you can develop these skills on your own and at school. Remember that even though subjects like math don’t always seem interesting at first, understanding them can give you the ability to do amazing things.

Also, teamwork is important to achieve big goals. All of the space missions require huge teams of engineers and scientists, mission control operators, and astronauts to get the job done. No one achieves these feats alone. Learning to be patient and get along with your friends and family members prepares to work well with others and on a team. This will be important for the rest of your life.     

And be sure to mark your calendar for July 30th as NASA prepares to send its next rover, The Perseverance, to Mars. 

Thanks for listening! Be sure to check out our website BedtimeHistoryStories.com to see our favorite books and movies about Mars exploration and a really cool video of NASA preparing its next Mars mission and SpaceX’s 2020 Mars mission. That’s BedtimeHistoryStories.com 

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Close your eyes and imagine you are standing in a wide open field. In the field you see a gigantic white rocket reaching far up into the sky. As you walk up to the rocket, the door opens and you climb inside and find a seat and buckle up. Next you hear the countdown – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Suddenly the rocket rumbles as it lifts of the ground and shoots through the sky, past the clouds, and up, up, up into space. When you look out the window you see the round blue ball of earth far below.

The rocket is going faster and faster. You zoom past the moon as the rocket picks up speed. Soon the other planets of our solar system pass you by. You look back and notice the earth has grown smaller and smaller until it has disappeared from view. Then suddenly you are traveling at the speed of light, and before long you have left the solar system and are deep into outer space. All is black. You travel further and further until suddenly you look out your window and see a beautiful cloud of dust and gas all swirling together. You have arrived at the place where stars are born. It is called a stellar nursery, which means a star birthing place.

Stars are sort of like people in that they are born, and they grow until they are bigger, and then eventually get old and die. But unlike people stars live for millions or even trillions of years. Our own sun is a star, it’s just a lot closer than the stars we see twinkling in the sky at night that appear so small.

For millions of years clouds of dust and gas in space swirl around each other in what is called a nebula. Over time these clouds slowly group together into clumps that eventually become baby stars — or protostars. Some stars grow bigger and bigger until they become as large as our own sun. And often they have their very own planets, just like our sun has its own planets. These stars become very hot  and bright, which is why when you look up at the sky at night you can see them even though they are sooo far away. To travel to many of these stars would take thousands of years.

The reason we know a lot about how stars are born is because of a space telescope. A space telescope is a telescope that is launched into space and can see better because it is above the earth. The Herschel Space Observatory was built by the European Space Agency and watched where stars were born for 4 years. Because of the hard work of the engineers and astronomers working on this space telescope, we know a lot more about the life of stars.

After changing from clouds of gas and dust many of these baby stars eventually become “main sequence” stars, then sub-giant stars and then red giant stars. Many of these very large stars are thousands of times bigger than our own sun. And our own sun is very, very big.

After millions of years even stars grow old and die. Eventually they begin to collapse in on themselves and then suddenly explode in what is called a supernova. During a supernova they shoot gas and dust for millions of miles around them. Supernovas happen in the universe all the time but often it’s hard for us to see them happening because there are so many stars and they are so far away. The people who study stars are called astronomers. Most astronomers thought the only way to see supernovae would be to use a large telescope run by many astronomers. In Australia there was an amateur astronomer named Robert Evans. He had a normal job during the day, but at night his favorite thing to do was to go on his back porch and use his little telescope to watch the stars. Robert was interested in supernovas, when stars explode, but decided he didn’t need all of the big telescopes to see them. So he started watching for supernovas on his own. For many nights Robert didn’t see anything. But he kept watching and kept waiting, until he saw his first supernova. He was so excited. Over the years Robert has seen 42 supernovae! Which is an amazing achievement. Because Robert is very patient and very diligent he has been able to see when these gigantic stars explode all the way across the galaxy.

When we look out in the night sky we see many stars, but they are very far away. After the sun, the closest star is called Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri is 25 trillion miles away! This gives you a little bit of an idea of how large our galaxy is.

Stars like our sun are very important because they are like huge factories which give off energy and heat. They send this energy in the form of waves that travel all the way across space to Earth. There are many reasons our sun is important. First off, without it would always be night. If it was always night, it would be very hard to see! Also, trees would never grow, because trees need the sun’s energy to grow. Without trees and other plants we wouldn’t have oxygen to breath and animals wouldn’t have food. And without animals and plants we wouldn’t be able to eat either. We would all be in very big trouble! Also, the earth would become very very cold and everything would freeze. Even on hot days, we should be very grateful we have a sun that keeps planet Earth running smoothly.

Next time when you go outside and feel the warm sun on your skin, think about how the sun rays travelled 100 million miles to to make you warm. That’s pretty amazing that an object sooo far away can make its way all the way to you and keep you warm and keep us all alive.

When we learn about how stars and our own sun it makes us grateful for nature and the world around us. And when we understand how important they are it reminds us to respect and take care of what we have.

Tonight think of some ways you can better take care of the Earth, whether it means picking up trash outside or not wasting water or planting flowers or a tree. There are many things around us in nature that we can be curious about and appreciate if we just take the time to notice them.

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