Year 7 Science · Unit 4 · Lesson 18
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Learning Goals
Past, present or future?
Read each achievement. Write whether it belongs to the past, the present, or the future of space exploration.
| Achievement | Past, present or future? |
|---|---|
| Sputnik 1 becomes the first satellite to orbit the Earth | |
| Astronauts live and work on the International Space Station | |
| The Artemis programme aims to send astronauts back to the Moon to stay longer | |
| Apollo 11 lands the first humans on the Moon | |
| People hope to one day send humans all the way to Mars |
Real-world context
When Apollo 11 reached the Moon in July 1969, the United States could not always point its own radio dishes at the Moon, because the Earth turns. NASA used a network of tracking stations around the world. Several were in Australia. The Honeysuckle Creek station near Canberra received the very first pictures of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon, and the giant Parkes radio telescope, known by its Wiradjuri name Murriyang, then provided much of the clear television that millions of people watched live.
(a) Explain why NASA needed radio dishes spread around the world, including in Australia, rather than just in the United States.
(b) Name the two Australian sites mentioned above and write what each one did during the Apollo 11 broadcast.
(c) Why do you think Australia's wide, quiet landscape makes a good place to build radio telescopes that listen for faint signals from space?
1. Sending humans to Mars is much harder than sending them to the Moon. Give two reasons why deep space travel is so difficult, and explain each one.
2. Some companies now build rockets that can land and be flown again. Explain how this helps to lower the cost of reaching space.
Wrap Up
In one sentence, what was the main idea of this lesson?