📖 Chapter 12 of 13 · Mysterious Space- Advance 2 · Class 9–10
A Little Space Glossary
- Gaganyaan
- India's mission to send its own astronauts (Gaganauts) into orbit.
- Crew-escape system
- A system that pulls the astronauts' capsule clear if a launch goes wrong.
- Transfer orbit
- The curved, fuel-saving path a spacecraft coasts along between two orbits.
- Launch window
- The right time to launch, when the planets are correctly placed.
- Gravity assist
- A slingshot past a moving planet that gives a spacecraft free speed.
- Habitable zone
- The band around a star where a planet could hold liquid water.
- Biosignature
- A sign of life, such as certain gases in a planet's atmosphere.
- In-situ resources
- Local materials (like ice and soil) used at a base instead of carrying everything from the Earth.
- Big Bang
- The hot, dense beginning of the Universe, about 13.8 billion years ago.
- Redshift
- The stretching of light from galaxies moving away, evidence of an expanding Universe.
- Spacetime
- Space and time together, which mass can curve — Einstein's picture of gravity.
- Space debris
- Dead satellites and fragments orbiting the Earth, which must be tracked and managed.