YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

November 5, 2008

First year grade pupils of primary school, Dr. Makoto Kobayashi, Wind Festival and Chandrayan

• I visited a certain primary school in Kokubunji to a first year grade classroom. I first talked about “Why do astronauts go to space?” and then there were three pupils who did not want to go to space, so I asked a girl “Why not?” then she answered, “Because I can’t see my mom” to which I said “How about together with mom?” she replied “Dad, too?”

She is lovely, isn’t she? A girl sitting next to the pupil who answered, “Because I can’t see my mom” made an expression “Oh yes, she is right” which drew my attention. Probably she raised her hand to the question “Do you want to go to space?” but she noticed she made a mistake not to think of mom. Many things lie before children to overcome on their way to growth.

I asked them not long after entering a primary school, “Have you seen launch of rocket?” to which they said, “Yes, I saw it on TV”, “I saw in a car papa drives”, I said “Eh, TV in a car?” “Yeah, small one, though” and all of them spontaneously began chitchats of their own. I talked fifteen seconds and their chatting lasted one minute. I together with a teacher in charge of the class tried hard to put things under control to continue my talk. Things repeated one after another to have made me completely exhausted to finish a classroom of only forty-five minutes. I thought schoolteachers are having really tough time.

• On a certain opportunity, I met with Dr. Makoto Kobayashi who was awarded Nobel Prize. Two things have remained in my mind out of his talk.

One of them, “All surroundings are gifted with many interesting things, and nature is very profound with many interesting phenomena far beyond one’s thought. I really hope children will notice it.” This is very important in a respect how to correspond children’s questions. In a case of study for exam to university, it will be easily understood with logically perfect answer to write a test paper so and so. Such perfect answers may also tentatively satisfy children’s intellectual curiosity. I thought it might not be good enough to reply their questions with correct answers.We may be rather misleading children with routine answers. We must think of some other ways to stimulate their minds to move their thoughts further advanced.

The second point, “We must continue research studies based upon various ideas in parallel one another, otherwise we can’t cope with real forefront situation.” It may also hold true in elementary particles theory and all other fields. In front-line problems of any field, it is common to have many theories not to be able to specify one correct answer. It is quite natural for an individual scientist to study hard under one’s hypothesis, but when it comes to a nation as a whole, it will be absolutely necessary to go with various potential possibilities even confronting one another. Dr. Kobayashi’s opinion refreshed my thought of importance of basic science rich in diversity.

• “Wind Festival for Children” in Sagamihara city

On November 1 and 2, “Wind Festival for Children” was held at Fuchinobe Park in Sagamihara city. I went there on Saturday only but it was fully crowded. Various artworks made by all municipal primary and middle schools in their art classrooms are on display taking full space of the park. Saturday was a sky clear and windy day as the name of the festival so that students had trouble with securing papers like pamphlets from gusty winds blowing occasionally. Many adults were crowded there to see their children’s or grand children’s works and children in hands with their parents or grand parents looked all so happy.

Mr. Nagasaki who recently joined “Children, Space and Future Association” (KU-MA) was in charge of the festival. For this relationship, he kindly called upon us to use a tent for display jointly run by KU-MA, YAC and JAXA. So we exhibited models of rockets, lunar probe, paper crafts of moon and planets, coloring books and Miura paper foldings, and we observed sun and sunspot through a sheet of white paper by astronomical telescope, and also we received radio waves by simplified antenna from amateur radio satellite occasionally passing overhead, all of which were such enjoyable events.

• The first image of earth from Chandrayan of India

The lunar explorer of India Chandrayan that was launched on October 22 is now gradually gaining altitude on orbit around the earth. As of November 1, perigee is 465km and apogee 267 thousand kilometers. The orbit takes six days for the probe to go around earth. Engine injection for two minutes and thirty seconds scheduled on Monday will take the spacecraft to apogee 384 thousand kilometers and will be put on the lunar orbit on November 8.

Like in the case of Japanese KAGUYA, orbital injection operation is a very nervous work. The command will be probably sent from Bangalore ground control station, and all the staffs engaged in this mission must be already feeling the strain in other stations like Thiruvananthapuram, Mauritius, Brunei and Port Blair. Separation of the 29kg MIP (Moon Impact Probe) from spacecraft to let it fall onto the lunar surface seems to be carried out on either Nov. 14 or 15. Scientists are now carefully studying where is the best spot for the probe to hit.

On October 29, TMC (Terrain Mapping Camera) onboard Chandrayan successfully attempted test photographing by the command from ground control center at Bangalore. The first shooting was focused on the north coast of Australia from altitude 9000km and the second was on the south coast of Australia from 70,000km, both of which were safely transmitted to the ground control center. The camera is black and white with resolution of five meters. The shooting areas were cloudy not clearly seen of Australian continent but the images were very clear.

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Oct31_2008.htm

By the way, I heard Hokkaido had a first snow of the year. Hokkaido people may be angry with me if I say it’s nice and cool, but nationwide it’s getting chilly in the morning and evening. I, so sensitive to heat, have been wearing short-sleeved shirts so far, but took a jacket to Mikawa-anjo where I went last Sunday. Readers, please be careful with your health at the change of the seasons.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.

matogawa@planetary.or.jp

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