VOLUME 2, Nº 7
DATE: MARCH 2017
Reach the Sky Bulletin TEAM COUNTRY CURIOSITY ARTICLE: TURKEY Turkey officially known as the Republic of Turkey is a country located in Eurasia mainly on the
Anantolian peninsula in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq and Syria. It's size is approximately 780,580 km² and it's capital is Ankara. It's official language is Turkish and their currency is Turkish lira. Their flag is red featuring a white star and crescent it is often called al bayrak. They have no official national emblem but the star and crescent. Their anthem is called İstiklâl Marşı. About 80,000,000 people live in Turkey approximately 102 people every km2 of which 99 % of
them are Muslim while the remaining 1 % are various other religions. Their current president is Recep Tayyip Erdogan while their prime minister is Binali Yıldırım. Turkey is a Republican parliamentary democracy, The largest city and the one with the most population is Istanbull followed by Ankara. One of their most known land marks is the Hagia Sophia, a former mosque and now a museum located in Istanbul.
Their highest peak is Mount Ararat located in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey between Doğubeyazıt and Iğdır. Turkey is among the world's most developed
countries according to the CIA World Factbook, they have the 18th largest GDP in the world and they are amongst the leading producers of agricultural products, textiles, construction materials etc. Their main economic branches consist of service activities, industry and agriculture their unemployment rate is about 9.3 %. Turkish history covers a time frame of more than 4000 years. Turks first lived in Central Asia around 2000 BC. These Turks established many states and empires that were all independent from each other. These empires included The Great Hun Empire which was established during the 3rd Century BC, the Göktürk Empire, the Uygur Empire, the Avar Empire, the Great Seljuk Empire etc. The Turks started settling in Anatolia (the Asian part of Turkey) in the 11th century because of migration. When the Turks completely conquered Anatolia they establised the Anatolian Seljuk State which was the first Turkish state in Anatolia, sometimes it was also called the Konya Sultanate (which was it's capital city's name). The Seljuk State started rapidly declining because of the Mongol invasion of Anatolia in 1243. During this time a petty chieftain by the name of Ertughrul won control over a limited area around Sögüt, between Ankara and Constantinople which became the capital of the Otoman empire until 1326. Ertughrul was succesed by his son Osman in 1285 whose people became known as Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans rapidly expanded in the 14th century and thus arose the Ottoman Empire. During there rapid expansion due to their well organized millitary a crusade was called on them on the 1st of January 1443. The crusade was not effective as the Ottomans
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proclaimed a decisive victory against a crusading army in 1444 which marked the end of the crusade. In 1453 the Ottomans capture Constantinople which marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginnig of the New Age. In this time the Ottoman Empire were using the infamous Janissaries in all of its major campaigns. During this time the empire was ruled by Sultan Mehmet II, who took the title of ''The Conqueror''. At
this time the empired entered a state of rapid growth and developments which would countinue all the way to the end of the 16th century. At its height, the Ottomans ruled over what is today Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania in the Balkans, over all the islands in the Eastern Mediterranean, and over what is today the Middle East. At the start of the 16th century the Empire started to lose its large economic and military superiority compared to Europe which started developing very quickly with the Renaissance. At this the the balance of power finally shited in favor of the European states, it was at this time when the Ottoman Empired started to face a decline. In 1912 to 1913 at the time of the Balkan Wars the Ottomans continued to lose even more land and during World War I the Empire continued to weaken more and more. They joined the Central Powers. Even though they showed succes against the Allies in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, in the same year there was an event called the Armenian Geonice in which about 1,5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman goverment in an attempt to create a new homogenous Turkish state. At this time Arabia rose against them and the British even managed to occupy Jerusalem which was under Ottoman rule for 400 years. In 1918 the Ottoman Empire collapsed and in 1922 the sultan was overthrown by Turkish nationalists and the
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modern history of Turkey began. On the 29th of October, 1923 Turkey was proclaimed a Republic and for the first time in centuries, the Turkish people could enjoy self-rule as they elected Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as the first president of the Republic of Turkey. Atatürk was president for 15 years until his death in 1938 he introduces a broad range of reforms in the social, economic, political and even cultural squares which were virtually unparalleled in any other country. A new political system was created based on the ideas of parliamentary democracy, human rights, national sovereignty and so on. A new education system was also created, the Arabic alphabet was replaced with the Latin alphabet. Many new laws were established like equal rights for women and the right to vote and be elected etc. This put Turkey very much ahed of other Western nations in terms of woman right. It was revolutionary. On the 15th of July, this year factions within the Turkish Millitary started a coup d'etat in an attemp to overthrow the current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan which was unsuccessful. Apparently the elimination of democratic rule, a disregard for human rights, and Turkey's loss of credibility were all reasons for the coup. Sources and literature: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ Ottoman.html http://www.turkishculture.org/general-1067.htm http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/history http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/ PlainTextHistories.asp? groupid=3140&HistoryID=ac94&gtrack=pthc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_of_Varna http://turkeyflag.facts.co/turkeyflagof/turkeyflag.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d'% C3%A9tat_attempt http://www.history.com/topics/armenian-genocide http://www.umich.edu/~turkish/links/ ottemp_brhist.html http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/ turkey-facts/ http://www.luximoti.com/Turkey/information/countryprofile-turkey.html Luka Jezovšek Slovenia
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Eating Food in Space Imagine going camping for more than a week with several of your close friends. You would make sure you have plenty of food and the gear to cook and eat it with. The food would have to be stored properly and be nonperishable to avoid spoilage. After finishing your meal, or at the end of your camping trip, you would then stow all your gear and dispose of
your trash properly just before to go home. Astronauts basically do the same thing when they go to space. Preparation varies with the food type. Space food has changed over the years and astronauts are no longer limited to dehydrated food while spending time on the International Space Station. Some foods can be eaten in their natural forms, such as brownies and fruit. Other foods require adding water, such as macaroni and cheese or spaghetti. Of course, an oven is provided in the space station to heat foods to the proper temperature. There are no refrigerators in space, so space food must be stored and prepared properly to avoid spoilage, especially on longer missions. Condiments, such as ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise, are provided. Salt and pepper are available but only in a liquid form. This is because astronauts can't sprinkle salt and pepper on their food in space. The salt and pepper would simply float away. There is a danger they could clog air vents, contaminate equipment or get stuck in an astronaut's eyes, mouth or nose. Astronauts eat three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nutritionists ensure the food astronauts eat provides them with a balanced supply of vitamins and minerals. An astronaut can choose from many types of foods such as fruits, nuts, peanut butter, chicken, beef, seafood, candy, brownies, etc. Available drinks include coffee, tea, orange juice, fruit punches and lemonade.
As on Earth, space food comes in disposable packages. Astronauts must throw their packages away when they have finished eating. Some packaging actually prevents food from flying away. The food packaging is designed to be flexible and easier to use, as well as to maximize space when stowing or disposing of food containers. ‘Cooking’ is a somewhat euphemistic way of describing how the ISS crew prepares its meals. Much of the food can be eaten straight from their packets and all the drinks are dehydrated. Coffee, tea, milk and juices are rehydrated using a valve attached to the station in the ISS Service Module, while a similar process is employed for rehydrating the soups, pastas and other dried meals. Despite culinary limitations and regulations, astronauts are free to combines foodstuffs to their heart’s content. Expedition 18 ‘Iron Chef’ Sandy Magnus was notable in her creative combination of everyday ISS food items to form tasty dishes. For example rehydrated rice, chicken, olives, sundried tomatoes, cheese, garlic, onions and pesto came together to form a tasty Mediterranean dish for her ISS ‘Italian night’. Her talents with their limited ingredients also enabled her to cater for the crew around Christmas time. She proved that having a good cook on board can make a huge difference to morale. The development of food fit for space goes beyond feeding astronauts and keeping morale high aboard the ISS. The Advanced Food Technology Project is NASA’s program for researching foods with much longer shelf lives than those required aboard the ISS, for missions lasting several years where a resupply from Earth is impossible. A future manned mission to Mars and beyond will require low -mass, high-quality and longer shelf-life foodstuffs. Part of a long-mission duration astronaut’s diet will also be harvested from plants in a hydroponics bay aboard the spacecraft. While food research and technologies for space exploration are far more sophisticated today, the basic challenges of feeding the crew on a year-long mission to a distant world are pretty much the same as those faced by Christopher Columbus, over 500 years ago. Webography: https://www.spaceanswers.com/space-exploration/ how-important-are-heavy-lift-rockets-for-spacetravel/ Pentek Iulia Romania
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ASTRONOMER BIOGRAPHY – YURI GAGARIN
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first man to enter deep space on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet cosmonaut made a flight that orbited Earth lasting one hour and 48 minutes in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. This accomplishment made the smiling Soviet pilot internationally famous as the first man to venture into space, the final frontier. The feat beat the Americans, who put Alan Shepherd into space in a sub-orbital flight on May 5, 1961, and did not have an astronaut orbit the earth until John Glenn accomplished the feat on February 20, 1962. The perpetually smiling Gagarin, who was promoted from senior lieutenant to major in the Soviet Air Force and was awarded the honor Hero of the Soviet Union for his accomplishment, became an international celebrity. He made many trips to foreign lands, including three to the United Kingdom, to publicize the Soviet space program that, since its inception with Sputnik in 1957, had been more advanced than that of the United States. Thus, Gagarin was a prime pawn in the propaganda wars between the two countries at the height of the Cold War. He was appointed a deputy to the Supreme
Soviet in 1962 before he went back to the Soviet cosmonaut training facility, Star City, where the extremely bright Gargarin worked designing reusable spacecraft. He eventually was promoted to the rank of full Colonel of the Soviet Air Force. His celebrity was still so great, the Soviet government refused to let him return to space, though he eventually was chosen as one of the astronauts for the Soviet moon landing program. Though he had been trained as jet fighter pilot, his superiors limited his flight time so as not to lose one of the USSR's greatest heroes of the Cold War period. The 34-year-old Gagarin died on March 27, 1968 during a routine training flight in a MiG15UTI. The ashes of Gagarin and co-pilot Vladimir Seryogin were entombed in the Kremlin and Star City was renamed in his honor.
Necj Oset, Slovenia
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ASTROPHYSIC RESEARCH TEAM: APOLLO PROGRAME et. This three-stage rocket sent the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. It was about as tall as a 36-story building. The first manned mission to the moon was Apollo 8. It circled around the moon on Christmas Eve in 1968.
Apollo was the NASA program that resulted in American astronauts' making a total of 11 spaceflights and walking on the moon. The first Apollo flight happened in 1968. The first moon landing took place in 1969 and the last one was in 1972. 12 astronauts was on the moon. They had scientific research there and studied the lunar surface. They collected moon rocks to bring back to Earth. Their vessel was a capsule with room for three astronauts. It was larger than the spacecraft used in the Mercury and Gemini programs. They had room to move around inside the spacecraft. The crew area had about as much room as a car. Two types of rockets were used for the Apollo program. The first flights used the smaller Saturn I (1) B rocket. It was about as tall as a 22-story building. The other flights used the more powerful Saturn V (5) rock-
However, Apollo 8 did not land on the moon. It orbited the moon, then came back to Earth. The crew was Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell. Apollo Flight 7 was fr om 11. Oct to 22 Oct. 1968. Apollo Flight 8 was fr om 21 Dec. to 27 Dec 1968. Apollo Flight 9 was fr om 3 Mar . to 13Mar . 1969. Apollo Flight 10 was fr om May 18-26, 1969. Apollo Flight 11 was from July 16-24, 1969. Apollo Flight 12 was from 14-24, 1969. Apollo Flight 13 was fr om Apr il 11-17, 1970. Apollo Flight 14 was fr om J an. 31-Feb. 9, 1971 Apollo Flight 15 was fr om J uly 26-Aug. 7, 1971. Apollo Flight 16 was fr om Apr il 16-27, 1972. Apollo Flight 17 was fr om Dec. 7-19, 1972. Apollo 13 is one of the more famous lunar missions. A movie was made about this flight. Apollo 13 was supposed to land on the moon. On the way there, the spacecraft had a problem. NASA had to figure out how to bring the astronauts home safely. Apollo 13 flew all the way around the moon before returning home. Despite the problem, they were able to land safely on Earth.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/ features/nasa-knows/what-was-apollo-program58.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/ missions/index.html Katja StraĹĄek, Slovenia