ebook img

Stamping the Earth from Space PDF

446 Pages·2017·53.658 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Stamping the Earth from Space

Renato Dicati Stamping the Earth from Space Stamping the Earth from Space Renato Dicati Stamping the Earth from Space 123 RenatoDicati Unione Stampa Filatelica Italiana Milan Italy ISBN978-3-319-20755-1 ISBN978-3-319-20756-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20756-8 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016947474 ©SpringerInternationalPublishingSwitzerland2017 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeor part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway, andtransmissionorinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware, orbysimilarordissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthis publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformationin thisbookarebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication.Neitherthepublishernor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material containedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade. Printedonacid-freepaper ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Preface SinceOctober4,1957,whenthefirstartificialEarthsatellite,Sputnik1,was launched, thousands of books and articles have been written for telling in every detail all aspects of the history of space exploration, perhaps the greatest adventure of human history. There is no topic that has not been treated and it is difficult to find anything new to say. But, despite all that has been published, there is still place to write about space exploration in an original and enjoyable way, for example, through philately. This book presents an historical and philatelic overview of one of the major topics of astronautics: the exploration of the Earth from space. It introduces and describes in detail the research fields in which artificial satellites,mannedspaceships,andorbitalstationshavecontributedtobuilda new image of our planet and its environment. Theatmosphereandionosphere,thegeomagneticfield,theradiationbelts and magnetosphere, the weather and climate, the Earth’s resources, the structure of the depths of the oceans and the characteristics of sea surface environments, the shape, dimensions, and movements of the planet Earth. Thesearesomeofthesubjectsillustratedhereinconsiderabledetailthrough postage stamps and other postal documents for philately, issued in many different countries throughout the world. It is not, however, an encyclopedic work or an atlas of space exploration basedonpostagestampsinsteadoftheusualillustrations,itisratheraseries of data notes and discussion of the content of given stamps, cancellations, space covers, maximum postcards and complete sets, all relating to Earth observation from space. The book consists of ten chapters. The first is a prologue in which we outline the main stages of astronautics, with particular reference to human missionsinspace.Chapter2presentssometopicsthathavebeenthesubject ofresearchsincethelaunchofthefirstsatellites:thegeodesy,thestudyofthe shapeandthesizeofEarthandmonitoringofslowmovementsofitssurface. Here we limited to only consider the satellites whose mission was mainly geodesic.Wehaveneglectedthecontributionsofnavigationandlocalization satellitessuchastheTransitorGPSsystemsalong withothertopicssuchas “search and rescue”andsurveillance, which can constitutetogetherwiththe main topic of satellite communications the object of a next project. v vi Preface InChap.3,wetalkabouttheenvironmentinwhichmanyofthesatellites operate:theenvelopeofgassurroundingtheEarth,theatmosphere.Thefinal part of the chapter deals with the most delicate part of this envelope, the so-called ozone layer, and describes many missions that have helped scien- tiststounderstandthephenomenonofozonedepletionandtotakemeasures for its protection. Another highly valuable part of our atmosphere, the ionosphere,isdiscussedinaseparatechapter.Thelargemagneticcavitythat protects the Earth from energetic particles from the Sun and from space, the magnetosphere, is discussed in Chap. 5 of the book. Knowledge of the magnetosphere and its many components is one of the areas where greater hasbeenthecontributionofsatellitesanduntilthebeginningofthespaceera very little was known on the subject. Chapter 6 is devoted to meteorology, oneoftheoldestandmostpopularapplicationfieldsofspaceexploration.In the following chapter, we deal with a subject that for years has worried the techniciansresponsiblefortheconstructionofspacevehicles,thatofcosmic dustandmicrometeoritesthatfalltoEarthcontinuously.Today,thankstothe observationsmadebysatellites,weknowthatthedangerposedtoastronauts by these small bodies is very low although a mass of about 40,000 tons of micrometeorites falls onto Earth every year. Chapter 8 is devoted to the study of Earth’s resources from space. Geology, monitoring ofagricultural, forestandwater resources,thestudyof soils, the search for mineral deposits and oil, land use planning, and control ofnaturaldisastersandenvironmentaldegradationarejustsomeofthetopics to which the satellites give increasingly important contributions. An additional chapter deals with the aspect of cartography and mapping from space. The book concludes by examining one of the most precious and delicate elementsofourplanet:oceans.About71%oftheplanet’ssurfaceiscovered withwater,andtheoceanscontainapproximately96.5%ofallEarth’swater. The oceans influence almost all aspects of life on Earth, and since the early steps of space exploration many missions have been dedicated to learning more about the so-called sixth continent. The ten chapters are preceded by an introduction in which we give some technical information on stamp collecting with some topics, addressed to non-specialists,whichaimtointroducethedifferenttypesofitemsbelonging to philately. Readers will appreciate the pictures of postage stamps, here all in color, numbering over 1130. Stamps are reproduced in full scale. For graphic reasons, the sheets, leaflets, envelopes, postcards, space covers, and special cancellations are generally reproduced in slightly reduced scale, always adequate,however,toensurefullunderstandingofthecaptionstobeseenin these postal documents. The material used to illustrate the topics comes exclusively from the author’s collection. Obviously it would not be possible to use all the phila- telic items that hundreds of postal authorities around the world have pro- duced in the last seventy years to celebrate the events of the conquest of space. Preface vii The author has therefore carefully chosen and studied every issue throughout the world that could have a bearing on relevant events in the history of Earth exploration, so as to ensure additional in-depth information and also to highlight any links between the single chapters. Milan, Italy Renato Dicati Contents 1 Prologue: From Sputnik to the International Space Station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 The Beginning of the History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Early Artificial Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 Human Spaceflight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.4 Living in Space: The Salyut Space Stations . . . . . . . . 11 1.5 The Skylab Space Station. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 1.6 The Space Shuttle, the Reusable Spaceship . . . . . . . . 18 1.7 The Mir Space Station. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 1.8 The International Space Station: A Permanent Base in Earth Orbit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2 Satellite Geodesy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.1 The Shape and the Size of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2.2 Vanguard 1 Discovers the “Pear Shape” of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.3 The ANNA Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.4 Tracking of the “Echo” Balloons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.5 Laser Satellite Ranging: Beacon Explorer and GEOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 2.6 French Geodetic Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.7 PAGEOS: Return to Balloons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 2.8 Secret Geodesy: Military Geodetic Satellites. . . . . . . . 44 2.9 Satellite Altimetry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 2.10 Geodynamic Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.11 Gravity Sensors and Accelerometers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3 Researches on the Atmosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 3.1 Nomenclature of Atmospheric Structure. . . . . . . . . . . 59 3.2 First Observations of the Atmosphere from Space. . . . 60 3.3 The Chemical Composition of the Atmosphere. . . . . . 63 3.4 The Atmospheric Satellites of Explorer Program. . . . . 65 3.5 Atmospheric Researches with Military Satellite. . . . . . 69 3.6 The Orbiting Geophysical Observatory Program . . . . . 72 3.7 European Researches: San Marco, Ariel 3, and Aeros Satellites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 ix x Contents 3.8 The Soviet Researches with Cosmos Satellites . . . . . . 78 3.9 The Second Generation of “Atmosphere Explorer” Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.10 Faint Phenomena in the Upper Atmosphere . . . . . . . . 86 3.10.1 The Geocorona. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 3.10.2 The Airglow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 3.10.3 Noctilucent Clouds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 3.11 Earth Radiation Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 3.12 Observing the Atmosphere from Space Stations . . . . . 96 3.13 The Spacelab Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 3.14 Atmospheric Research from Mir and ISS. . . . . . . . . . 103 3.15 The Project A-Train, a Train for the Atmosphere . . . . 106 3.16 Megha-Tropiques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 3.17 Observations of Atmospheric Ozone . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 4 Ionospheric Research with Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.1 A Glance at Ionosphere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.2 First Observations from Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 4.3 Alouette, the First Topside Sounder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 4.4 Explorer 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 4.5 ISIS (International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 4.6 The Soviet Ionospheric Satellites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 4.7 The Intercosmos Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 4.8 Other National Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 4.9 The Aurora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 4.10 Physics of the Aurora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 4.11 The Observation of Aurora from Space . . . . . . . . . . . 142 5 Exploration of the Earth’s Magnetosphere. . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 5.1 The Earth’s Magnetic Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 5.2 Satellite Studies of Geomagnetism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 5.3 The Van Allen Radiation Belts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 5.4 The Third Radiation Belt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 5.5 The Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere. . . . . . . . . . . 163 5.6 The Exploration of the Magnetosphere. . . . . . . . . . . . 164 5.7 Exploration of the Radiation Belts—the Soviet Programs Electron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 5.8 The Ring Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 5.9 First European Programs: HEOS and GEOS. . . . . . . . 179 5.10 The International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE) . . . . . . . 181 5.11 Active Experiments in Space: The AMPTE Project. . . 184 5.12 The Intercosmos Programs for the Study of the Magnetosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 5.13 The Interbol Missions: New Models of Magnetosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 5.14 Soviet–French Cooperation: The ARAKS and Arcade Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.