George and the Blue Moon

by Stephen Hawking

The walls of Mission Control were covered in screens displaying the different journeys of the active missions across the Solar System. Some of the screens showed pictures sent back by Rovers from the surface of planets, moons, or comets. Other screens reeled off streams of raw data, just in from space, which still had to be filtered into recognizable information.

  On a couple of the screens, Annie and George could see the path of different robotic missions as they journeyed across the Solar System. On another, they could track the looping pattern that nightfall made across the Earth as one of the monitors followed the International Space Station. They could even key into images relayed from the robotic explorers on the Moon or on Mars. It was an incredible sight. From this one room, it was as though they could travel anywhere across space! Only one screen, at the bottom on the right-hand side, was entirely blank. All the others displayed a wealth of information about the progress of human beings and robots across our cosmic neighborhood.

  “This is incredible!” said George, brightening up. For the first time since they had stepped across the threshold of Kosmodrome 2, he felt pleased to be here. Looking around, he could see nothing sinister, no security bots, no drones. Instead, just lots of real, ordinary humans, chattering away in great excitement.

  At the back, a mezzanine balcony held lots of Kosmodrome 2 staff, hanging over the edge of the parapet, waving to the new arrivals. Every available nook was completely jam-packed. Kosmodrome 2 workers, in their bright blue flight suits, filled the circular room. Alongside them stood a sprinkling of outsiders, easily identifiable thanks to their casual clothes. Beside them, shifting nervously, were a bunch of much younger people, also dressed in blue flight suits.

  Annie and George, who were both friendly by nature, smiled at a couple of the other recruits.

  “Hello!” George said to one boy about his age who was walking past. The boy looked startled and hurried away. Annie tried to talk to an older-looking girl, but she looked straight over Annie’s head and moved on.

  “They’re not very friendly!” whispered Annie to George. “Do we want to be stuck in a tin can with these people for nine months? And look! Everyone else has brought their parents into Mission Control! Their parents didn’t get told to leave!”

  Despite everything, George was secretly relieved that his own parents weren’t there. His little sisters would have created absolute havoc in this environment—he wouldn’t have been surprised to look up at one of the monitors and find they were controlling a Rover on Mars, while his father would have been haranguing Kosmodrome 2 staff about the eco-friendly (or not) aspects of space travel.

  Over on the other side of the crowded Mission Control, two parents were loudly quizzing some Kosmodrome 2 staff.

  “Will she get extra credit for her participation in the program?” a sharp-faced mother with big puffy lips barked out while the father looked about blindly, lost without his smartphone. “It is crucial that we can add this to her résumé.”

  George looked over. This woman, all angles apart from her inflated lips, was the opposite of his own mom, who was smiling, round-faced, and gentle.

  “Résumé?” he whispered to Annie. “What’s a résumé?”

  “It’s a thingy,” she said helpfully, “where you write down all the stuff you’ve done.”

  “It will go with her musical training at the Conservatoire, her ballet program at the Marinksy, her perfect grade-point average, her weekend volunteering with the underprivileged, her studies in advanced mathematics, and her place rowing in the eights at the Junior Olympics,” the pushy parent continued.

  George’s jaw dropped. “Wow!” he said to Annie. “I thought you were an overachiever.” It gave him a cold feeling inside to hear all this. None of it sounded very happy or fun, and certainly not as though these prize achievements had been done because someone loved these activities so much they couldn’t not do them. It sounded like they had been painstakingly put together and done with gritted teeth.

  “And,” the mother added, “her weekly culinary column in La Bonne Bouche Junior.”

  Despite all this magnificence, the daughter looked remarkably unexcited by her surroundings. Composed, certainly, and very still—but very unbothered, almost to the point of being inert. To the outside observer, it was as though she simply wasn’t there inside her body.

  At that moment, all the screens on the walls went blank. The room darkened as though a show was beginning. Even the noisier parents quieted down and stopped their clucking. The screens sprang back into life, all showing the same panoramic view of space. On each screen was an incredibly beautiful image of a stellar nursery, an area of space where new stars are born.

  “It’s like Cosmos’s window!” Annie whispered to George. “That time that Dad used Cosmos to show you how a star is born in space.”

  “It’s probably a picture from a space telescope,” said George.

  “But it’s moving!” said Annie.

  She was right—the great clouds of gas and dust were not static as they would be in a photograph. Instead, they were dynamic—collapsing in on themselves through the force of gravity to become a ball, which got so hot at its heart that it started to fuse hydrogen to helium, creating a new star. As everyone in the room watched, gripped by the spectacle, the star shone with a ferocity and heat unimaginable. As the star blazed, it created elements in its furnace of a belly.

  When the star could burn no more, it exploded, in a huge great big supernova explosion, sending the outer core across space in a great hot cloud of gaseous dust once more. Inside that cloud were the elements the star had created. In the center of the gigantic explosion, the core of this huge star remained, collapsing in on itself to become a point in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, could escape. The massive star’s death had formed a black hole.

  And yet from this black hole something was emerging… . The gathered crowds watched in amazement as particles expelled from the black hole assembled themselves, making a shape that quickly took on human form and came to dominate the screen. The figure got clearer and clearer until the whole screen was filled with just one image.

  The sound was not far behind. “Greetings, fellow travelers!” purred a voice.

  Annie and George heard a sharp intake of breath as the whole room seemed to register this new presence. It was such a musical and attractive voice that George for one immediately felt he would do anything the voice required.

  “Welcome!” it continued.

  They could now see clearly the face on the screen. They knew this must be Rika Dur, because they had seen her photo on the Internet—but what the photo hadn’t really captured was how mesmerizing Rika really was. Completely unexpectedly, both Annie and George found themselves drawn to the image on the screen.

  “Cosmic seekers,” the figure continued. “Welcome to Kosmodrome 2! My name is Rika Dur, and I am head of Kosmodrome 2.”

  Even Annie, whose own father had been replaced by Rika, found herself nodding in approval at this statement.

  “Kosmodrome 2,” continued the virtual Rika on the screen, “is home to the world’s two greatest space exploration aims—first, sending life in the form of human beings out into the Solar System and beyond. And second, finding alien life-forms in space and bringing them back to Earth for scientific study. These are the two greatest projects ever undertaken. And you, candidates, are going to play your part! Congratulations on getting this far. You have taken your first steps into space already. You have beaten tens of thousands of other applicants to join the Mars Mission training program for young astronauts.”

  “She’s amazing,” said George in a whisper to Annie as a cheer went up around the room. “I thought she’d be horrible, but she’s kind of awesome.”

  “You are the best and brightest candidates. This is Phase One, where we train you in the skills you will need to survive in space. In Phase Two we will sift through the group. Who is stardust and who is nuclear waste? Who will be discovered, like t
he Higgs boson, and who will rejected, like the steady state theory of the Universe?”

  Annie felt very conflicted. She wanted to hate Rika because she was in the place where her dad should be standing, but she also thought Rika was really cool and wanted to hear more of what she had to say.

  “Who will adapt to survive … and who will become extinct?”

  “Me!” Lots of trainees had their hands up. “I want to survive! I want to be an astronaut! I want to live on Mars!”

  “Not all of you can go into space,” continued Rika, her huge face now filling all the screens, a look of heart-melting sincerity and compassion on her face. “A few of you will emerge victorious from the process—but I am afraid that most of you will be eliminated as we go along.” She smiled. “From this very minute,” she continued blithely, “you will enter the training period of your mission, learning about life in space and about the tasks you will undertake on Mars. At the end of the training period you will be paired with another candidate, and together you will take part in a series of challenges. You must move through the challenges together. If we send you into space, we must be able to depend on you entirely to do the right thing, not only for your own sake, but also for that of your fellow travelers and for the space colony itself. You will be the very first people to live on a planet other than the Earth! You will found an off-Earth civilization—it will be your descendents who perhaps survive for millennia into the future. Can you feel the crunch of the red planet under your space boot? Can you gaze into the distance and see the Sun sink through the pink sky over the empty Martian horizon? As the process goes forward, weaker candidates will be weeded out and only the strong will survive! Good luck, new recruits to Kosmodrome 2,” said Rika, in a thrillingly excited voice. “May the best candidates win!”

  Building Rockets for Mars by Allyson Thomas

  When I was growing up, I was interested in math and science, but my passion was actually ballet. When I was in high school, I enrolled in a very challenging curriculum for math and science—it had a heavy workload that made it nearly impossible to dedicate the time required to study ballet. But I still wanted to do both! After a difficult year I chose a curriculum that allowed me the flexibility to study ballet too. It was a fantastic decision, because I was able to continue dancing while still preparing myself to study engineering at college.

  Now I work at NASA, but I still practice and perform ballet on nights and weekends, so I enjoy the best of both worlds!

  As a NASA engineer, I am helping develop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will travel to Mars. This is so exciting, to be part of this great project.

  Right now NASA is preparing for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), a flight test of the entire SLS rocket. This will be the final flight test of the vehicle prior to launching humans. It is my responsibility to ensure that a part of the rocket called the volume isolator is properly designed for the loads and conditions of this flight.

  Volume isolators are used in rockets to contain purge gases within certain sections. These purge gases keep each section at the right temperature and humidity conditions for the sensitive instrumentation inside. This is important because the rocket has cryogenic fuel—this makes it very cold in places, but instrumentation nearby needs to be warmer in order to function properly.

  The volume isolator I am responsible for is called the MSA diaphragm. It is located near the top of the rocket, just below the crew vehicle in a section of the rocket called the Multipurpose Crew Vehicle Stage Adapter, or the “MSA” for short. It is located there to make sure that the environment below the isolator is properly conditioned by the purge gas.

  The MSA diaphragm will need to endure the force of liftoff, so it needs to be strong.

  But it also needs to be as lightweight as possible to reduce the amount of fuel needed to launch the crew vehicle into outer space.

  A challenge, right?

  Here’s how we deal with that.

  The MSA diaphragm is dome-shaped, with a 16.4-foot diameter, and it is made from a high strength and lightweight material called carbon composite.

  Carbon composite is created by layering pieces of carbon fabric with epoxy glue. In the case of the MSA diaphragm, the layers of carbon fabric are placed inside of a large bowl-shaped mold. Each layer of fabric is laid down at a different angle in order to create a final product that has quasi-isotropic properties. This means that the dome will have the same strength no matter the orientation—this is important. If the angle of the fabric stayed the same in each layer, the final product would be strong in one orientation, but comparatively weak in any other orientation.

  After every layer of the MSA diaphragm has been placed in the mold, the entire mold is rolled into an enormous oven to cure and harden. Once the MSA diaphragm is hardened, it is pried from the mold and machined to add bolt holes that will be used to connect it to the MSA.

  This method of creating a strong yet lightweight structure by layering fabric is also used when creating the shoes that allow me as a ballet dancer to dance on my toes! Each shoe is designed with a strong yet lightweight box that surrounds my toes and provides the support needed to balance, spin, and even jump on the very tips of my toes. This box is created by layering fabric and glue, much like in the MSA diaphragm.

  Not everyone who looks at a rocket part sees a ballet shoe, but my life experiences have given me the perspective to see the world in a unique way. Through following your passions in life, you will begin to see the world from your own unique viewpoint.

  At NASA, we aim to build teams of people who have unique perspectives so that we can see problems from multiple angles. This diversity helps us to overcome the many challenges associated with building a rocket—a rocket that will travel all the way to Mars.

  What Are Chemical Elements and Where Do They Come From? by Dr. Toby Blench

  Very simply, a chemical element is a pure substance made from a single type of atom. Why is that interesting? Well, there are only 118 known elements and all things in the world are made from a combination of one or more of these elements. The study of how these elements behave and make compounds is the science of Chemistry.

  If everything is made from these elements, where do they come from? The two smallest elements, Hydrogen and Helium, were formed at the start of the Universe in the Big Bang, and sometime after they came together in large quantities to form stars. In stars, like the Sun, Hydrogen burns at very high temperatures in a process called fusion to make Helium. As stars get older the amount of Helium builds up and Hydrogen runs out and so the stars start to use Helium as fuel, leading to larger elements like Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen. Since these elements are the basis of human life, you could say that we are made of stars!

  Depending on how big and hot the star is, larger and larger elements are made in a number of different fusion processes until you reach Iron. After that, one of the major ways of forming elements happens when stars explode, which is called a supernova. A supernova releases the huge amounts of energy that are required to make the heavy elements.

  All these processes account for 94 of the elements, and they all occur naturally on Earth. The other 24, called “transuranic” as they are heavier than Uranium, are man-made with special equipment like nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. These elements are not very stable and fall apart to form smaller, more stable elements in a process called fission. Elements that fall apart in this way are called “radioactive.” When radioactive compounds fall apart, they also release energy, and that can be used to generate electricity, which is what happens in a nuclear power station.

  The Periodic Table

  At first glance, the Periodic Table looks like a simple list of all the known elements, but it is much more powerful than that. It tells you how heavy they are, how many protons and electrons are in the element, and how they are arranged. It is the arrangement of the electrons that govern how elements react.

  It is called the Periodic Table because the properties of the e
lements repeat periodically. For instance, all elements in a group (the downward columns) have their electrons arranged the same way and so react in a similar way. This repeating pattern occurs because electrons are arranged in energy levels and each level can only contain a fixed number of electrons.

  The table was invented by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869 and has developed over time as more elements have been discovered. He was a chemistry professor who had been thinking about how a number of elements behaved in a similar manner and how best to display the information he had. He spent so long thinking about it that the answer finally came to him in a dream.

  The most impressive thing about his idea was that he left gaps where he thought that there should be an element but one had not yet been discovered!

  A very important thing to do when you have a new scientific theory is to use it to make a prediction that you can test, to see if your theory is correct. Mendeleev did just that. In his table, he had a gap below the element Silicon and he made a prediction about the properties the missing element would have. He called it eka-silicon. It was not until 1886 that the element was discovered and called Germanium—and the properties of Germanium are almost exactly the same as Mendeleev had predicted for eka-silicon!

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  At the end of their week, Rika was at Mission Control in person to greet them! Surrounded by a semi-circle of the now familiar robots, she stood at the front of the room, a slight figure in a blue suit, the gigantic screens of Mission Control forming the perfect backdrop to her confident, poised stance. But she exerted the same fascination as she had when they had seen her on the screen. The other trainees pushed and jostled to get as close to her as they could, as though she was a pop star and they were her fans!

  “Welcome back!” Rika smiled as the whole room melted a little and swayed in adoration. “I hope you have all enjoyed your time with us. For some of you, the journey is about to begin. For others, it’s time for you to depart.” She sounded sorrowful, as though she was genuinely distressed that some of the trainees hadn’t made the grade.