• Question: do you go up into space

    Asked by dean98 to Mike, Matt on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by jay1999.
    • Photo: Mike Salter

      Mike Salter answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Sadly not! It would be really cool if I did though.

      The majority of satellites are completely un-manned. There are loads of communications satellites that send TV signals and phone calls around the world – and there are loads of science satellites that have instruments on board measuring loads of different things. As there’s no people onboard engineers have to think really carefully about how they’ll work – after all, there’ll be nobody there to fix it!

      There was a satellite named Voyager 1 that launched in 1977 (well before you and I were born) it’s now 11,000-million miles away and is the furthest away manmade object. It’s still working and we can still pick up its radio signal from here on earth – pretty amazing! I hope one day I can be involved in something as good as that.

    • Photo: Matt Maddock

      Matt Maddock answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      No, but I’d LOVE to!

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