• Question: How did you think of an awesome space craft for science?

    Asked by anon-219542 to Bella on 8 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Bella Boulderstone

      Bella Boulderstone answered on 8 Jun 2019:


      So I might not be the best person to be asking about spacecraft, I think that Declan does work with spacecraft. But I do know the processes towards coming up with ideas because while it’s a complex and difficult form you need to fill out, anyone can have a great idea on spacecraft.
      First, you need to come up with what it is that you would like to use the spacecraft for. For telescopes like Hubble, people were really excited to see what the universe looked like in a way that nobody else had done before, and they wanted to see what the universe looked like without the atmosphere of the Earth getting in the way (the Earth’s atmosphere stops some of the light getting to the surface, where we live, so we need to send telescopes up to look at it).
      Then, you have to find out how you’re going to power it, and usually that comes in with big solar panels, but other spacecraft like Cassini which went to Saturn, was powered by radiation from things like Plutonium because at Saturn, there isn’t enough light to power a spacecraft.

      After that, you need to figure out all the tricky bits, like the scientific instruments you want to put on your spacecraft, how they’re going to sit together on the spacecraft, how they’re going to be loaded to get up in space, loads!

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