Hitch your wagon to a star

Mary: Betty, quickly, turn on the TV, please! The Galileo orbiter was broadcasted to have reached Jupiter.

Betty: Wow! When did you hear that?

M: Just a few minutes ago. The shuttle Atlantis was reported to have been launched in 2009. It carried the orbiter Galileo for a five-year flight.

B: And? What else did they say?

M: Unfortunately, I only heard that bit because I turned on the radio at the end of the news.

B: The subject will surely be covered on TV soon. We should wait a little. Meanwhile we can look through the newspapers. We get a lot of them.

M: But there are few papers in the hall.

B: Oh, Dave took them, most likely. Dave! Are you reading the papers now?

Dave: Yes, Betty, we are in Dad's study with Nick. He is watching TV. Join us if you want.

B: You see Mary, all the family watches TV separately in their own rooms. In the US, there are a lot of TV programmes and a thousand stations in the 50 states. So choices in the family seldom coincide.

D: That's true, Mary, we often argued on what programme to watch, as mother likes serials, father prefers news and serious discussion programmes. Betty would choose musicals and comedies, the twins – cartoons, whereas I like sport programmes.

N: Same here. But I find detective series difficult to resist, too. And I hate it when advertisements interrupt them. Breaks like those get on my nerves.

D: Oh yes, but you can't avoid them. Nearly all TV in this country is commercial. Though there is one channel run by the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) where there are no commercial breaks.

M: Could we watch the news now? Which channels are likely to broadcast news?

B: NEC (the National Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) and ABC (the American Broadcasting Corporation). They are the major companies.

D: Yes, we live in a thick informational broth. American journalists seem to have made the news a necessary part of people's life. If there weren't papers and TV, we would become dumb and would have nothing to talk about with the pals, I guess.

N: From the point of view of papers there is nothing else in the world but sensations. How many sensations can someone's head deal with? About 5 are all it can take. Nevertheless, we readily allow ourselves to be idiotic time and time again.

B: "Much ado about nothing," Shakespeare would have called it.

M: I m sorry, boys, I wanted to know whether there was any news about space research. I didn't catch much about it on the radio. Did you read anything about it in the newspapers?

N: There is lots of interesting information in American newspapers on the topic. And you know, the quality of some papers is very high and a lot of facts are quoted by many papers in the world.

D: If only all of the huge quantity of American papers were of high quality! Out of the 2,000 titles of daily papers the "yellow press" makes up a considerable part.

N: Here is an article in the Washington Post on the investigation of inner planets of the solar system – Mercury, Mars and Venus – by the spacecrafts the Mariner, Viking and Pioneer. Passing Saturn in 1980, the Voyagers are reported to have found winds of more than 1.600 kilometres per hour at that planet's equator. Saturn was discovered to have hundreds, even thousands of rings. Voyager-2 passed Uranus in 1986, discovering that it has rings, too. It passed Neptune in 1989...

B: I've seen colour images of the planets sent back by spacecrafts in magazines. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn happen to be vivid places, possessing craters, volcanoes, auroras, moons, alive with winds, storms and lightning. Oh, excuse my interrupting you, Nick.

N: Never mind. I only wanted to conclude that the US is reported to be planning several interplanetary launches including one in which an unmanned spacecraft will study an asteroid, then rendezvous and fly in tandem with a comet for several years. In the future NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) plans missions to take a sample of a comet core for analysis.

M: How unimaginable the Universe is! The more incomprehensible outer space seems, the greater its magnetic force attracts me.

B: Mary, unmanned missions are believed to lead to human exploration of the solar system in the 21-st century. And you may happen to be one of those who will touch the miracle with their hands.

D: "Hitch your wagon to a star," said Ralph W. Emerson... Do you want to know what the New York Times writes about the Hubble Space Telescope?

N: I've read it was named in honour of American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953). It is known to weigh 12 tons and to be the largest telescope ever put into space.

D: Yeah. Its cameras can look 20,000 million light years to the edges of the known Universe – looking back in time as well as in space. With the telescope, scientists hope to explore the shape and age of the Universe itself.

M: How will it operate? Is it going to be manned?

D: No, the telescope was launched into orbit by the space shuttle. 18 ground based computers and 20,000 daily radio commands aim the telescope and operate its complex instruments.

B: Will it help us to find out whether extraterrestrial life exists?

D: The telescope will be pointed at nearby stars and if the cameras find planetary systems surrounding these stars, it may increase the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists.

N: Just think, it will be certain to produce images of quasars, pulsars and exploding galaxies thousands of light years away from Earth!

M: I've read about the hypothesis of the Big Bang – an unimaginably huge explosion which is supposed to be the start of the Universe. The expanding sphere of energy and matter then cooled down and coalesced forming galaxies, stars and planets – the Universe.

D: You see, the telescope is believed to be able to help check this theory of the origin of the Universe. It may be capable of "looking back" to what existed right after the Big Bang – the Universe at the beginning of time.

B: No way! That's astonishing! I just can't imagine all those space dimensions. Infinity and eternity are beyond the grasp of my mind.

D: That's what space technology, skylab spacecrafts and satellites are used for. And not only that. Communication satellites transmit computer data, radio and television broadcasts and telephone calls.

M: Don't forget that when we are back in Britain, please.

B: Of course not, Mary, dear! As long as space communication exists we’ll never lose each other.

N: Hush! Here are the NBC news at last.

TV broadcaster: This is Michael Hurst with NBC news. The Galileo orbiter launched in October 2009 on a historic five-year flight to Jupiter has reached it. The Galileo orbiter has dropped the first probe into the atmosphere of an outer planet. The probe had been taking measurements for about 75 minutes before it was crushed by atmospheric pressure. The orbiter will explore Jupiter for 20 months. Galileo is expected to give new information on the origins of the solar system.

M: That's what I have been waiting to hear!