Humans can’t travel to other planets yet. A trip to Mars would need much bigger spacecraft than the shuttle. Instead, unmanned space probes like Voyager can travel through the solar system, sending home pictures of the planets.
Is it true? A Mariner took photos of Mercury.
Yes. A very successful space probe called Mariner 10 visited the planet Mercury three times in the 1970s. As well as taking photos, Mariner discovered Mercury’s strange magnetic field, and signs of ice at the poles.
Which probe got too hot?
Four Venera probes have landed on Venus. The temperature there is a sweaty 480o C. As if that wasn’t nasty enough, the clouds rain pure sulphuric acid!
Amazing! The Huygens probe will parachute on to Saturn’s largest moon in 2004. Huygens is hitching there on a Saturn probe, Cassini. Titan is bigger than the planets Mercury or Pluto. Titan has its own, cloudy atmosphere, blocking our view of its surface. Titan might be covered in an ocean, so Huygens is designed to float!
Which probe visited a comet?
Giotto was made to visit Halley’s Comet as it passed Earth in 1986. Giotto had a special shield to protect it from the dust of the comet’s tail. The probe took measurements and photographs from 600 km away, revealing the rocky heart of the comet.
Picture Credit : Google
