Page 4 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

The journey to the Moon was the climax of a hectic race into spAce between America and the Soviet Union (now Russia). To achieve success as fast as possible, one strategy was to make the spAcecrAft disposable. That relieved the designers of a whole raft of problems.
But it was not the way forward in the long term. If people were to thrive in space, they would have to have spacecraft that were reusable, and they would have to have spAce stAtions they could live on for a long time. Both of these challenges were enormous, and space scientists had been giving a lot of thought to them even before the completion of the Apollo Moon program.
Furthermore, until the completion of Apollo, traveling into space had been mainly an adventure. But space science and technology now had to pay their way and be seen to be useful. That was never going to be through the glamorous events of the Moon program but through everyday benefits for people on the Earth, mostly through the deployment of sAtellites.
To find out about the space race and the journey to the Moon see Volume 6: Journey into space.
Apollo The program developed in the United States by NASA to get people to the Moon’s surface and back safely.
geostAtionAry orbit A circular orbit 35,786 km directly above the Earth’s equator.
Hubble spAce telescope An orbiting telescope (and so a satellite) that was placed above the Earth’s atmosphere
so that it could take images that were
far clearer than anything that could be obtained from the surface of the Earth.
orbit The path followed by one object as it tracks around another.
rotAtion Spinning around an axis. sAtellite A man-made object that orbits
the Earth.
spAce Everything beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
spAcecrAft Anything capable of moving beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Spacecraft can be manned or unmanned. Unmanned spacecraft are often referred to as space probes if they are exploring new areas.
spAce sHuttle NASA’s reusable space vehicle that is launched like a rocket but returns like a glider.
spAce stAtion A large man-made satellite used as a base for operations in space.
 A satellite being released into orbit from the Space Shuttle.
4