NASA
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Carl Sagan played an important role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Galileo, and Voyager missions. During his work with NASA, he also did studies on the planets Venus and Mars. During his studies on planets, he discovered and proved many new scientific theories, such as the Runaway Greenhouse effect.
Click HERE to learn more about Voyager and Viking |
" A quarter century earlier NASA planetary probes accomplished two more audacious landings. The giant machines Viking 1 and Viking 2 dwarfed the tiny rovers now on Mars. Unlike the rovers, which are designed for acquiring primarily geological information, the Vikings were sent to Mars for but one purpose: to search for life."
- Peter Ward, " Life As We Do Not Know It"
Voyager 1
The satellite mission that he influenced the most was Voyager 1. Before the satellite was launched, Carl Sagan convinced NASA's
administrators to put a twelve inch copper disc on the Voyager satellite. It
was encoded with greetings in many different languages, natural sounds, music,
and photographs. Carl hoped that one day extraterrestrials would find the
message and come to Earth.
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"We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us."
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
Pale Blue Dot
The second influence Carl Sagan had on the satellite was he convinced NASA to turn the spacecraft's camera towards the Earth. His did this because he wanted people to realize just how small our world is compared to the universe. This is what inspired his Pale Blue Dot quote.
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"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
- Carl Sagan
Mars's Climate
Another great discovery that Carl made was when he realized that a climate could be changed by small differences such as changes in orbit, or in the amount of solar radiation a planet experiences. An example of planetary climate change would be Mars. Carl realized that Mars could have one day had large oceans. He decided this from the fact that Mars was covered with what looked like dry riverbeds.
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After he did a little more studying, he concluded that Mars may have switched between a warm, wet climate and a dry, cold climate. This discovery was important because most people thought that a planet's climate could not change.
Click HERE for more information on Mars |