Transcript: November Week 4

PAUL
Welcome to Idaho Skies on Radio Boise. This is the fourth week of November. We’re your hosts, Paul..

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
Mercury makes it best appearance for the year on the morning of the 25th.

KRIS
To find it, look nine degrees above the east-southeast horizon at 7:00 AM.

RACHEL
For a handy reference, your palm is about ten degrees wide when viewed from an outstretched hand.

PAUL
Get it? Handy reference?

KRIS and RACHEL
Shusssh, they get it.

RACHEL
So lay your pinky finger along the horizon and Mercury will appear near the top of your index finger.

KRIS
Mercury will be easier to see if you use a pair of binoculars.

RACHEL
Mercury will be the only bright star in the area.

KRIS
When you look at Mercury, you’re looking at a world that’s only 38% as large as earth.

PAUL
It’s also only 38% as far from the sun.

RACHEL
Mercury has a surface temperature of one thousand three hundred degrees at the equator.

KRIS
But during the night, its surface temperature is one of the lowest in the solar system. In fact it gets so cold that nitrogen gas would freeze into a liquid.

RACHEL
So if the planet had an atmosphere it would rain liquid nitrogen.

PAUL
Two weeks after the United States, the Soviet Union put their own spacecraft into orbit around Mars on November 27th, 1971.

KRIS
But unlike the American Mariner 9, the Soviet Mars 2 spacecraft carried a lander.

RACHEL
The one ton lander separated from the orbiter before the orbiter fired its braking engines to enter into Martian orbit.

PAUL
That way, the orbiter’s braking rocket could be smaller. It didn’t have to slow down both the lander and orbiter.

KRIS
The braking rocket on the lander was smaller still since it primarily used the Martian atmosphere to slow it down.

RACHEL
Although the Soviets weren’t very clear about it, it appears the lander failed to land properly.

KRIS
In other words, it crashed.

SOUND EFFECT OF A CRASH

RACHEL
Somewhere on Mars there is a 35 year old crater filled with Russian scrape metal.

KRIS
That’s Idaho Skies for the fourth week of November. Join us next week to hear about space chimp Enos and the Pleiades.

For Idaho Skies this is Kris…

RACHEL
..Rachel..

PAUL
.. and Paul.