Rovers, Space Stations and Underground Labs: Gathering Evidence

0:00Is astronomy only about looking through telescopes?

0:04Telescopes are one way: they collect light from distant stars and galaxies.

0:10Scientists also send instruments to other worlds, into orbit and deep underground.

0:17A rover is a robot vehicle that explores another world, like Mars.

0:22Rovers drill into rock and analyze it with instruments on board.

0:28Curiosity, which landed in 2012, found signs of an ancient lake in rock layers.

0:35Perseverance, which landed in 2021, has been collecting rock samples in sealed tubes.

0:43The International Space Station, or ISS, orbits about 400 kilometres up. This drawing is not to scale.

0:53It circles Earth about once every 90 minutes.

0:58It is a lab in microgravity, where things float because the station is always falling around Earth.

1:05The robotic arm Canadarm2 and the robot Dextre move cargo outside the station.

1:11Cosmic rays are fast particles from space that hit Earth all the time.

1:17SNOLAB is a lab about 2 kilometres underground, in a mine.

1:23The rock above stops almost all cosmic rays, shielding the detectors.

1:28Neutrinos are tiny particles that pass through rock easily, so a detector here can catch a few.

1:37Other detectors hunt for dark matter, unseen matter that has not yet been detected directly.

1:43So astronomy is more than telescopes: rovers, space stations and underground labs gather evidence too.