Hi Justin,

Given the chance, I would travel into space for any reason! I don't think I could pass up the opportunity, although I wouldn't want to spend long periods of time up there (maybe a month, but not longer).

Holly

Hi Justin,

I would love to be an astronaut and travel into space. However, I don't think that sending astronauts to the Space Station to study the Sun would be very cost-effective or productive. The Space Station was mainly intended to be a laboratory to study the effects of long-term weightlessness on people, to learn how to live in outer space for long periods, and to study how materials and chemicals behave in a micro-gravity environment. The experiments conducted on the space station have applications mainly in the fields of medicine, biology, and materials processing. These experiments can teach us things that we will need to know if we do eventually send a manned mission to Mars.

The Space Station is not really a good laboratory for studying the Sun. Because the Space Station orbits the Earth, we could observe the Sun in wavelengths that are not visible from the ground. However, we could not monitor the Sun continuously for 24 hours per day from the Space Station because its orbit around the Earth takes it to the night side of the planet, where the Sun is not visible. Unmanned missions like the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) can be placed in special orbits that allow the spacecraft to continuously monitor the Sun. Missions like this are a much better way to study the Sun, as they require less maintenance than the Space Station, and can be sent into environments where it would be too dangerous to send people.

Kris