Pages 38 A simple, fun, and modern introduction to our solar system. Our solar neighborhood is an exciting place. The Solar System is full of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, minor planets, and many other exciting objects. Learn about Io, the explosive moon that orbits the planet Jupiter, or explore the gigantic canyons and deserts on Mars. The Solar System is made up of all the planets that orbit our Sun. In addition to planets, the Solar System also consists of moons, comets, asteroids, minor planets, and dust and gas. Everything in the Solar System orbits or revolves around the Sun. The Sun contains around 98% of all the material in the Solar System. The larger an object is, the more gravity it has. Because the Sun is so large, its powerful gravity attracts all the other objects in the Solar System towards it. At the same time, these objects, which are moving very rapidly, try to fly away from the Sun, outward into the emptiness of outer space. The result of the planets trying to fly away, at the same time that the Sun is trying to pull them inward is that they become trapped half-way in between. Balanced between flying towards the Sun, and escaping into space, they spend eternity orbiting around their parent star.

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoirs of Academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap. This official NASA history series document has been converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. In this Volume 2, Chertok takes up the story with the development of the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and ends with the launch of Sputnik and the early Moon, Mars, and Venus probes. His engaging accounts of these dramatic and historic years reveal repeated failures, technical problems, and governmental struggles that marked the opening of the space race in the Soviet Union. An extensive technical discussion provides new details about the tragic Nedelin Disaster in October 1960 which killed over 100 workers attempting to launch an ICBM. Chertok calls it most horrific disaster in the history of missile and space technology. Contents: Three New Technologies, Three State Committees * The Return * From Usedom Island to Gorodomlya Island * Institute No. 88 and Director Gonor * The Alliance with Science * Department U * Face to Face with the R-1 Missile * The R-1 Missile Goes Into Service * Managers and Colleagues * NII-885 and Other Institutes * Air Defense Missiles * Flying by the Stars * Missiles of the Cold War's First Decade * On the First Missile Submarine * Prologue to Nuclear Strategy * The Seven Problems of the R-7 Missile * The Birth of a Firing Range * 15 May 1957 * No Time for a Breather * Mysterious Illness * Breakthrough into Space * Flight-Development Tests Continue * The R-7 Goes into Service * From Tyuratam to the Hawaiian Islands and Beyond * Lunar Assault * Back at RNII * The Great Merger * First School of Control in Space * Ye-2 Flies to the Moon and We Fly to Koshka * The Beginning of the 1960s * Onward to Mars...and Venus * Catastrophes Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory near Moscow. Twenty-seven years later, he became deputy to the founding figure of the Soviet space program, the mysterious Chief Designer Sergey Korolev. Chertok's sixty-year-long career and the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program constitute the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread over four volumes, Academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society's quest to explore the cosmos. NASA issued a statement about the passing of this pioneer: Russian rocket designer Boris Yevseyevich Chertok, one of the founding fathers of the Russian space program, passed away on Dec. 14, 2011 at the age of 99. We share the loss of Boris Chertok with our Russian colleagues, said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations. He was he a spaceflight pioneer and an inspiration to everyone associated with spaceflight. I remember him coming into the control center in Moscow in the middle of the night at the age of 97. He was an inspiration to every flight controller in Moscow. I also remember fondly sitting in Korolev's apartment in Moscow, now a museum, and having Boris describe meetings with Korolev, the general designer, at his kitchen table. The passion in Boris' eyes and voice gave me a unique insight into the Russian team and operations. Boris's speech this year at the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight was amazing and awe inspiring. His books and memoirs are a true treasure. He was a friend of NASA and he will be missed. His spirit will live on in the hearts of the Russian and American human spaceflight team. NASA SP-2006-4110.

In this third volume of a planned four-volume set of memoirs, the famous Russian spacecraft designer Boris Chertok, who worked under the legendary Sergey Korolev, continues his fascinating narrative on the early history of the Soviet space program, from 1961 to 1967, arguably the peak of the effort. Chertok devotes a significant portion of the volume to the early years of Soviet human space flight in the early 1960's. These include a chapter on the Vostok and Voskhod programs, which left an indelible mark on early years of the "space race," a lengthy meditation on the origins and early missions of the Soyuz space program, the flight and death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov during the very first piloted Soyuz flight in 1967. Additional chapters cover robotic programs such as the Molniya communications satellite system, the Zenit spy satellite program, and the Luna series of probes that culminated in the world's first survivable landing of a probe on the surface of the Moon. Chertok also devotes several chapters to the development of early generations of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles and missile defense systems. Chertok's chapter on the Cuban Missile Crisis provides a radically unique perspective on the crisis, from the point of view of those who would have been responsible for unleashing nuclear Armageddon in 1962 had Kennedy and Khrushchev not been able to agree on a stalemate. Two further chapters cover the untimely deaths of the most important luminaries of the era: Sergey Korolev and Yuriy Gagarin. Finally, historians of Soviet science will find much of the interest in the concluding chapter focused on the relationship between the space program and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. NASA SP-2009-4110.

Small Astronauts explain themselves. This is about the reality of a group of extraterrestrials.