World Space Week

October 4 – 10, this year will represent the 10th celebration of World Space Week. The United Nations General Assembly declared World Space Week in 1999. The celebration of World Space Week is under the guidance of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs based in Vienna, Austria. 

There are annual event at the national and local levels held all over the planet, but one really exciting area is where teachers can use the week to get their students interested in space.

This year SentForever are working with the WSW executive to allow every school and every student, as well as members of the public, to send a message into space. Messages can be sent here and they will be transmitted at the speed of light into deep space.

The messages travel so fast that if an eight year old sent a message, then by the time they leave school at 18, their message would have had time to pass by 11 of the nearest stars to Earth. It would also have traveled around 58,000,000,000,000 miles by that time or about 94 million million kilometers.

If you know of a science teacher or a school that may want to give it a go – send this on to them!

World Space Week

Our home - Earth

By Chris 

Did you know that October 4^th to 10^th is World Space Week? I didn’t. Apparently the United Nations General Assembly in 1999 declared October 4-10 annually as World Space Week. Today, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna provides the overall global coordination of World Space Week, under the guidance of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and with the support of World Space Week Association, a non-government organization. 

I’m impressed that so many bodies are actively promoting the education and awareness of space across the globe. Mind you, we do often take our position here on Earth for granted. In a previous posting I spoke about the Pale Blue Dot. That view of Earth taken by a Voyager probe that shows our planet as a pale blue dot against the un-inhabitable vastness of outer space. Solitude. Precarious positioning. A living planet so remote from any other living body in space. 

I am particularly interested in the pale blue dot as I once worked for a mining company and have spent more time underground than the vast majority of people on this planet. And I mean deep underground – about a mile or more. So deep that the rock temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and rock starts to flow over short periods of time due to the intense pressure. 

We regard Earth as our home, but in fact we can only live on the very surface of it. Some creatures do live in the ocean depths – but not humans. We are effectively trapped on the surface of a small round piece of rock, surrounded by a tenuous atmosphere floating in a loosely defined orbit in the vastness of space. Whew! 

But I’m glad – of course. As so many wondrous things happen and exist on our planet, and of course among the human race. I don’t believe for one moment that we are alone; there are other life forms out there, somewhere. Hopefully, at some time in the future, mankind may establish contact with them. It’s a long shot but I hope so.      

But by celebrating space week we are actually celebrating our potential neighbours, and hopefully educating people and broadening their awareness of what is all around us. And who knows who may be receiving the SentForever messages that are transmitted? Have a happy World Space Week.