Space Exploration Flashcards

Key vocabulary terms and definitions related to Space Exploration.

Solstice

The study of the Solstice comes from the Latin words sol meaning sun, and stice meaning stop.

Summer Solstice

Marks the longest period of daylight in the year and represents the start of summer (June 21 in the northern hemisphere).

Winter Solstice

Marks the shortest day of the year and the start of winter (December 21 in the northern hemisphere).

Equinox

Comes from the Latin words equi meaning equal, and nox meaning night; when day and night are of equal length (March 21 and September 22).

Geocentric Model

An Earth-centered model to explain planetary motion, proposed by Aristotle.

Heliocentric Model

A Sun-centered model where Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun, proposed by Nicholas Copernicus.

Astronomical Unit (AU)

The average distance from the center of Earth to the center of the Sun, approximately 149,599,000 km.

Light-year

The distance that light travels in one year, approximately 9.5 trillion km.

Star

A hot, glowing ball of gas (mainly hydrogen) that gives off tremendous light energy.

Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram

A diagram comparing the surface temperature of stars with their brightness (luminosity).

Nebulae

Regions of space where there are huge accumulations of gas and dust where stars form.

Protostar

The first stage in a star’s formation.The core gets hot enough, it will start to glow

Fusion

The process when hydrogen starts to change to helium, releasing great quantities of energy and radiation.

Red Giant

What a Sun-like star turns into when stellar material expands.

Red Supergiant

What a massive star turns into when stellar material expands.

White Dwarf

The final stage in a Sun-like star’s life when fusion ends and the star shrinks, becoming no larger than Earth.

Black Dwarf

A cold, dark star that a white dwarf eventually evolves into.

Supernova

A catastrophic event when the outer part of a massive star explodes.

Neutron Star

A rapidly spinning object only about 30 km in diameter that remains from a massive star when the fusion reaction stops.

Black Hole

A highly dense remnant of a star in which gravity is so strong that not even light from the radiation going on inside the remnant can escape.

Constellations

The groupings of stars we see as patterns in the night sky; there are 88 officially recognized ones.

Asterisms

Unofficially recognized star groupings.

Galaxy

A grouping of millions or billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity.

Milky Way

The spiral galaxy in which we live; it contains from 100 billion to 200 billion stars.

Protoplanet Hypothesis

A model for explaining the birth of solar systems.

Terrestrial Planets

Planets that tend to be smaller, rockier in composition, and closer to the Sun.

Jovian Planets

Planets that are large and gaseous and are located great distances from the Sun.

Asteroids

Small, rocky or metallic bodies traveling in space, mainly located in a narrow belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Comets

Objects made up of dust and ice that travel through space; their long tails and bright glow only appear when they get close to the Sun.

Meteoroids

Small pieces of rocks flying through space with no particular path.

Meteor

A meteoroid that is pulled into the atmosphere by Earth’s gravity and gives off light due to the heat of atmospheric friction.

Meteorite

A meteor that lasts long enough to hit Earth’s surface.

Azimuth

The compass direction used to locate an object in the night sky.

Altitude

How high an object is in the sky.

Zenith

The highest point directly overhead.

Ecliptic

The path in the sky along which the Sun appears to move.

Escape Velocity

The speed an object needed to overcome the force of gravity pulling the object back toward Earth (at least 28,000 km/h).

Rocket Structure

The structural and mechanical elements of a rocket, including the rocket itself, engines, storage tanks, and fins.

Rocket Fuel

Materials such as liquid oxygen, gasoline, and liquid hydrogen that are ignited in a combustion chamber.

Payload

The materials needed for the flight, including crew cabins, food, water, air, and people.

Ion Drives

Engines that use xenon gas instead of chemical fuels by electrically charging the xenon, accelerating it, and emitting it as exhaust.

Solar Sails

Harness the Sun’s light through the use of energy transmitted when photons hit the material so that the spacecraft move.

Shuttles

Transport personnel and equipment to orbiting spacecraft.

Space Probes

Contain instrumentation for carrying out robotic exploration of space.

Space Stations

Orbiting spacecraft that have living quarters, work areas, and support systems needed to allow people to live and work in space for extended periods.

Microgravity

The condition in which the gravitational forces that act on mass are greatly reduced.

Artificial Satellites

Objects that are built and sent into Earth’s orbit by humans.

Natural Satellites

Small body that orbits a larger body, such as a moon orbiting a planet.

Geosynchronous Orbit

Moving at the same rate as Earth spins.

Remote Sensing

A process in which imaging devices in a satellite make observations of Earth’s surface and send this information back to Earth.

Global Positioning System (GPS)

A system that uses 24 satellites in orbit around Earth to give people their location on the ground at any time.

Space Age Spin-offs

Objects that were first developed for exploring space and are now in our daily lives.

Refracting Telescopes

Use two lenses to gather and focus starlight.

Reflecting Telescopes

Use mirrors instead of lenses to gather and focus the light from stars.

Segmented-Mirror Telescope

A telescope that uses several lightweight segments to build one large mirror.

Interferometry

The technique of using telescopes in combination.

Hubble Space Telescope

Orbiting about 600 km above Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope (a reflecting telescope) uses a series of mirrors to focus light from extremely distant objects.

Electromagnetic Energy

A series of forms of energy that travels at the speed of light but has different wavelengths and frequencies;includes visible light, radio waves, infrared (heat) waves, and X-rays.

Wavelength

A measurement of the distance from one point on a wave (such as the crest) to the same point on the next wave.

Frequency

The number of waves that pass a single point in one second.

Radio waves

Give astronomers data that are not available from the visible spectrum.

Radio Telescopes

Spacecraft are typically made of metal mesh and are curved inward, with a receiver at the middle.

Radio Interferometry

A way to improve the performance and accuracy of radio images by combining several small radio telescopes to achieve greater resolving power than one large radio telescope can achieve.

Space Probes

Unmanned satellites or remote-controlled “landers” that put equipment on or close to planets where it would be too difficult or dangerous to send humans to.

Triangulation

Based on the geometry of a triangle. By measuring the angles between a baseline and the target object.

Parallax

Is the apparent shift in position of a nearby object when the object is viewed from two different places.

Spectrometer

An instrument astronomers use to compare the spectrum of a star with known spectra of elements to determine the star’s composition.

Doppler effect

The changes in pitch, the frequency of sound waves due to the movement from sound.

Space Junk

The pieces of debris that have fallen off rockets, satellites, space shuttles and space stations, and remain floating in space.

Canadarm

Is one of Canada's most versatile pieces of technology ever designed, used to launch and retrieve satellites, fix Hubble's optical apparatus and put together modules of the Int'l Space Station.

The technology contribution for the Mars Pathfinder mission

A Canadian-designed ramp that the Sojourner rover rolled down in 1997.

The first magnetic observatory

Established in the University of Toronto by Sir Edward Sabine, he learned that the aurora borealis was associated with sunspot activity.

Anik 1

Launched by Canada, it gave the whole country telecommunications coverage for the first time.

Cosmic Radiation

These come from the milky way, an extreme damage to humn cells.

Radar guns

These were used to detect drivers who are speeding.

Alouette 1

Was established in 1962 by Canada.

Earth

The planet we live on.

Venus

a planet known as earth's twin.

Mars

A planet referred to as the red planet.

Jupiter

The biggest planet of the solar system.

Saturn

A planet having many distinctive rings.

M87

A supermassive black hole in the galaxy.

Short excursion to the moon

Marked the first time that people on Earth could look up at the Moon and know that there were people on its surface looking back at them!

Solstice

The word comes from the Latin sol meaning sun, and stice meaning stop.

Objects in the Sky

They fuelled the human imagination, marked the passage of time, and foretold the changes in seasons.

One-Mitt Measure

Traditionally used the width of a mitt held at arm’s length to gauge the height of the Sun above the horizon.

Equinox

Comes from the Latin equi meaning equal, and nox meaning night.

Aristotle

He was aided by the mathematics and geometry of Pythagoras and Euclid, which he used to calculate the size and shape of the spheres.

Galileo Galilei

Provided solid evidence for Copernicus’s theory.

Johannes Kepler

The orbits of the planets were ellipses and not circles.

Looking into the past

You are seeing it as it was at an earlier time.

Star

is a hot, glowing ball of gas (mainly hydrogen) that gives off tremendous light energy.

interstellar matter

came from exploding stars.

supernova

The outer part of the star to explode in a catastrophic event.

Black holes

Are themselves invisible to telescopes.

Constellations

Are the groupings of stars we see as patterns in the night sky.

galaxy

Is a grouping of millions or billions of stars, gas, and dust.

Earth

A sphere has water in all three phases: solid, liquid, and gas.

Mars

Has been studied by telescope for centuries.

Uranus

Has one of the most unusual rotations in the solar system