The Majestic Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bears, one of the most majestic animals in the world, protective, yet also one of the cutest animals, EVER! They're mostly found in North America and Western Canada, as they are very adaptable and can be found in most places, from dense woodland and open plains to Arctic Tundra. In fact, North America is home to over 50,000 bears! They are also very hungry! They eat everything from dead animals and insects to berries and fish! As the summer draws to a close they enter a phase called hyperphagia. This last around 2-4 months when the bears vastly increase their calorie intake in preparation for the winter. Bears on the whole are actually quite solitary animals and not particularly territorial, surprisingly this is ideal behaviour as far as scientists are concerned. The bears spend a lot of their time rubbing their backs against trees where they leave their scent and hair. This is perfect for biologists as they can collect DNA from the local bears without being an interference. Grizzly bears are actually one of the slowest reproducing land mammals as the females don't reproduce until they're four or five. If the female doesn't put enough weight on throughout the course of the year, then the female doesn't reproduce that year because she won't have the energy or resources to raise the cubs

NASA: Tales of Triumph and Disaster - Part 1

40 years ago history was made worldwide, when the first man was landed on the moon. This will tell the ever continuing story of endeavours undertaken by the USA at the forefront of manned and unmanned space exploration.



The Astronauts part of the Mercury Mission

On July 1958 NASA was established, with one simple brief: to beat the Russians in the space race.  Drawn from military training pilots the hope was to get humans safely into space, but quickly and to a deadline.

During the 1950’s the American’s were still trailing the Russians in the space race.  NASA firstly established the Mercury programme to train seven astronauts to be ready for space. One included Alan Shepard who NASA selected for America’s first manned mission into space. Scientists at NASA were shaken as Russia launched their first manned space flight on the 15^th April 1961, only a few weeks before NASA’s first manned mission was to be launched.

On May 5^th Alan Shepard’s flight was still a history-making event. Whereas Yuri Gagarin had only been a ‘passenger’ in the vehicle, Shepard was able to manoeuvre the Freedom 7 space capsule himself.  Shepard made a safe return to Earth with a splashdown at sea and recovery by helicopter, even better still this was all captured on camera and broadcast to millions worldwide. As he returned to mainland America, he was honoured with parades in Washington, New York and Los Angeles.

This historic event signalled the first of many missions by NASA and further joint projects with various contries, including Great Britain, find out more in “NASA: Tales of Triumph and Disaster – Part 2” , coming soon)

The beginnings of the ISS

The first space station was launched by the Soviet Union, named Salyut 1, but this unfortunately was unsuccessful as the astronauts couldn't enter the Space Station due to a technical fault. The Soviet Union later launched Salyut 2,3,4,5,6,7 but these were all plagued with technical faults so didn't last any time at all. After the countless failures of the Salyut space stations the Soviet Union was successful in launching the Mir space station in February 1986. Cosmonauts on the Mir Space station were the first humans to spend more than a year in orbit.

In May of 1973 the United States launched its first space station, named Skylab which spent years successfully orbiting Earth. Meanwhile on the Mir space station a reliable system was developed for the transportation of equipment, food and crew members at Mir. Later in 1991, when the Soviet Union was divided, Russia took charge of Mir. By 2001, the space station was facing major problems and Russia decided to de-orbit the space station in March and it collapsed into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1984, President of US, Ronald Reagan, put forward the idea of a project of a permanent space station  named 'Freedom.' At that time, the estimated cost of the project was said to be  8 billion dollars. Many countries contributed, including the UK, Canada, Japan and Brazil. In 1993, President Bill Clinton, wanted to cancel the space program project, since it was facing a huge delay and it had exceeded the budget. At the same time, the Soviet Union was planning to build their next space station, Mir 2. After the division of Soviet Union, in 1993, Russia and United States came together and renamed the project as International Space Station.
 

On the 1st February 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart whilst it was entering the Earth's atmosphere. All seven crew members died in this incident and the disaster happened all over Texas. NASA, rightly so, cancelled all flights to the ISS to ensure the safety of further flights to the ISS and beyond. The construction of the ISS was completed in 2011 and is the 9th space station and the largest artificial satellite in Earth's orbit. Altogether the space station takes around 90 minutes to complete one revolution of Earth.

The ISS - Credit : NASA