George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt by Lucy Hawking Page A

“We live in hope.”
    â€œShut up, Emmett.” This time it was George’s turn to feel annoyed. “I want to hear what Annie has to say.”
    â€œOkay, here’s the scoop!” said Annie. “Settle down, friends and aliens, and prepare to be amazed.”
    Below them, Emmett was hugging the tree in an attempt to get closer to them.
    George smiled. “I’m prepared, agent Annie,” he said. “Go for it.”
    â€œMy amazing story,” began Annie, “starts one ordinary evening when no one could have predicted that for the first time ever in the history of this planet we would finally hear from an ET.
    â€œMe, my family, and I—,” she continued grandly.
    â€œAnd me!” squeaked Emmett from below.
    â€œAnd him,” she added, “had just come back from watching a robot land on Mars. Just your everyday family outing. Nothing special. Except that…”
    Â 
    A few weeks back, Eric, Susan, Annie, and Emmett had gone to the Global Space Agency to watch a new type of robot attempt to land on the red planet. The robot, Homer, had taken nine months to travel the 423 million miles to Mars. He was the latest in a series of robots sent by the agency to explore the planet.

    Eric was very excited about Homer touching down on Mars because he had special equipment on board that would help him find out whether there had ever been any life on our nearest neighbor. Homer would be looking for water on Mars: Using a special scoop at the end of his long robotic arm, he would scrabble through the icy surface of Mars to pick up handfuls of mud, which he would then bake in a special oven. As Homer heated up the samples of soil, he would be able to discover whether Mars, now a cold desert planet, had once, in its distant, warmer, wetter past, been flowing with water.
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    ROBOTIC SPACE TRAVEL
    A space probe is a robotic spacecraft that scientists send out on a journey across the Solar System in order to gather more information about our cosmic neighborhood. Robotic space missions aim to answer specific questions such as: “What does the surface of Venus look like?” “Is it windy on Neptune?” “What is Jupiter made of?”
    While robotic space missions are much less glamorous than manned spaceflight, they have several big advantages:
Robots can travel for great distances, going much farther and faster than any astronaut. Like manned missions, they need a source of power: Most use solar arrays that convert sunlight to energy, but others traveling long distances away from the Sun take their own onboard generator. However, robotic spacecraft need far less power than a manned mission, as they don’t need to maintain a comfortable living environment on their journey.
Robots don’t need supplies of food or water, and they don’t need oxygen to breathe, making them much smaller and lighter than a manned spacecraft.
Robots don’t get bored or homesick or fall ill on their journey.
If something goes wrong with a robotic mission, no lives are lost in space.
Space probes cost far less than manned spaceflights, and robots don’t want to come home when their mission ends.
    Space probes have opened up the wonders of the Solar System to us, sending back data that has allowed scientists to far better understand how the Solar System was formed and what conditions are like on other planets. While human beings have, to date, traveled only as far as the Moon—a journey averaging 234,000 miles (376,000 kilometers)—space probes have covered billions of miles and shown us extraordinary and detailed images of the far reaches of the Solar System.
    In fact, almost thirty space probes reached the Moon before mankind did! Robotic spacecraft have now been sent to all the other planets in our Solar System, they have caught the dust from a comet’s tail, landed on Mars and Venus, and traveled out beyond Pluto. Some space probes have even taken