daylight saving time

Daylight saving time (DST), time observed when clocks and other timepieces are set ahead so that the sun will rise and set later in the day as measured by civil time. The amount of daylight on a given day of the year at a given latitude is fixed, but over the year the hours of sunrise and sunset vary from day to day. During the summer months, the sun rises earlier and sets later and there are more hours of daylight. If clocks and other timepieces are set ahead in the spring by some amount (usually one hour), the sun will rise and set later in the day as measured by those clocks. This provides more usable hours of daylight for activities that occur in the afternoon and evening, such as outdoor recreation. Daylight saving time can also be a means of conserving electrical and other forms of energy. In the fall, as the period of daylight grows shorter, clocks are set back to correspond to standard time.

Benjamin Franklin, when serving as U.S. minister to France, wrote an article recommending earlier opening and closing of shops to save the cost of lighting. In England, William Willett in 1907 began to urge the adoption of daylight saving time. During World War I the plan was adopted in England, Germany, France, and many other countries. In the United States, Robert Garland of Pittsburgh was a leading influence in securing the introduction and passage of a law (signed by President Wilson on Mar. 31, 1918) establishing daylight saving time in the United States. After World War I the law was repealed (1919). In World War II, however, national daylight saving time was reestablished by law on a year-round basis. National year-round daylight saving time was adopted as a fuel-saving measure during the energy crisis of the winter of 1973–74. In late 1974, standard time was reinstituted for the winter period. In 1987 federal legislation fixed the period of daylight saving time in the United States as the first Sunday (previously the last Sunday) in April to the last Sunday in October; it was expanded in 2005 (effective 2007) to extend from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. Arizona and Hawaii do not use daylight saving time.

standard time

Standard time, civil time used within a given time zone. The earth is divided into 24 time zones, each of which is about 15° of longitude wide and corresponds to one hour of time. Within a zone all civil clocks are set to the same local solar time. Adjacent zones typically differ by a whole hour, although there are instances, such as in Newfoundland and South Australia, of half-hour zones. Standard time is based on universal time. Standard time was largely the creation of the Canadian railway engineer Sir Sandford Fleming (1827–1915). Its establishment in the United States was mainly due to the efforts of the educator Charles Dowd and William Allen, secretary of the American Railroad Association. Standard time officially came into existence after a 19-nation White House meeting in 1884, with the prime meridian established at Greenwich, England. In the United States, time zones are regulated by the Dept. of Transportation.

See also daylight saving time.

Space exploration: Chinese Space Program

China launched its first satellite in 1970 and then began the Shuguang program to put an astronaut into space, but the program was twice halted, ending in 1980. In the 1990s, however, China began a new program, and launched the crewless Shenzhou 1, based on the Soyuz, in 1999. The Shenzhou, like the Soyuz, is capable of carrying a crew of three. In Oct., 2003, Shenzhou 5 carried a single astronaut, Yang Liwei, on a 21-hr, 14-orbit flight, making China only the third nation to place a person in orbit. A second mission, involving two astronauts, occurred in Oct., 2005.

Space exploration: The Space Shuttle

After the Skylab space station fell out of orbit in 1979, the United States did not resume sending astronauts into space until 1981, when the space shuttle, capable of ferrying people and equipment into orbit and back to earth, was launched. The shuttle itself is a hypersonic delta-wing airplane about the size of a DC-9. Takeoff is powered by three liquid-fuel engines fed from an external tank and two solid-fuel engines; the last are recovered by parachute. The shuttle itself returns to earth in a controlled glide, landing either in California or in Florida.

The shuttle can put a payload of 20 tons (18,000 kg) in earth orbit below 600 mi (970 km); the payload is then boosted into final orbit by its own attached rocket. The Galileo probe, designed to investigate Jupiter's upper atmosphere, was launched from the space shuttle. Astronauts have also used the shuttle to retrieve and repair satellites, to experiment with construction techniques needed for a permanent space station, and to conduct scientific experiments during extended periods in space.

At first it was hoped that shuttle flights could operate on a monthly basis, but schedule pressures contributed to the explosion of the Challenger shuttle in 1986, when cold launch conditions led to the failure of a rubber O-ring, and the resulting flame ruptured the main fuel tank. The shuttle program was suspended for three years, while the entire system was redesigned. A second accident occurred in 2003, when Columbia was lost during reentry because damaged heat shielding on the left wing, which had been damaged by insulation shed from the external fuel tank, failed to prevent superheated gas from entering the wing; the hot gas structurally weakened the wing and caused the shuttle to break up. Prior to the Columbia disaster, the shuttle fleet operated on approximately a bimonthly schedule. Shuttle flights resumed in July, 2005, but new problems with fuel tank insulation led NASA to suspend shuttle launches for a year. In 2004, President George W. Bush called for a return to the moon by 2020 and the establishment of a base there that would be used to support the human exploration of Mars. The following year NASA unveiled a $104 billion plan for a lunar expedition that resembled that Apollo program in many respects, except that two rockets would be used to launch the crew and lunar lander separately.

In June, 2004, SpaceShipOne, a privately financed spacecraft utilizing a reusable vehicle somewhat similar in concept to the shuttle, was launched into suborbital flight from the Mojave Desert in California. Unlike the shuttle, SpaceShipOne is carried aloft by a reusable jet mothership (White Knight) to 46,000 ft (13.8 km), where it is released and fires its rocket engine. The spacecraft was designed by Bert Rutan and built by his company, Scaled Composites. The vehicle's 90-minute flight was the first successful nongovernmental spaceflight.

Space exploration: Space Stations

After the geophysical exploration of the moon via the Apollo program was completed, the United States continued human space exploration with Skylab, an earth-orbiting space station that served as workshop and living quarters for three astronauts. The main capsule was launched by a booster; the crews arrived later in an Apollo-type craft that docked to the main capsule. Skylab had an operational lifetime of eight months, during which three three-astronaut crews remained in the space station for periods of about one month, two months, and three months. The first crew reached Skylab in May, 1972.

Skylab's scientific mission alternated between predominantly solar astrophysical research and study of the earth's natural resources; in addition, the crews evaluated their response to prolonged conditions of weightlessness. The solar observatory contained eight high-resolution telescopes, each designed to study a different part of the spectrum (e.g., visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, or infrared light). Particular attention was given to the study of solar flares (see sun). The earth applications, which involved remote sensing of natural resources, relied on visible and infrared light in a technique called multispectral scanning (see space science). The data collected helped scientists to forecast crop and timber yields, locate potentially productive land, detect insect infestation, map deserts, measure snow and ice cover, locate mineral deposits, trace marine and wildlife migrations, and detect the dispersal patterns of air and water pollution. In addition, radar studies yielded information about the surface roughness and electrical properties of the sea on a global basis. Skylab fell out of orbit in July, 1979; despite diligent efforts, several large pieces of debris fell on land.

After that time the only continuing presence of humans in earth orbit were the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations, in which cosmonauts worked for periods ranging to more than 14 months. In addition to conducting remote sensing and gathering medical data, cosmonauts used their microgravity environment to produce electronic and medical artifacts impossible to create on earth. In preparation for the International Space Station (ISS)—a cooperative program of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Brazil, and the ESA—astronauts and cosmonauts from Afghanistan, Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Japan, Kazakhstan, Syria, and the United States worked on Mir alongside their Russian counterparts. Assembly of the ISS began in Dec., 1998, with the linking of an American and a Russian module (see space station) Once the ISS was manned in 2000, maintaining Mir in orbit was no longer necessary and it was made to decay out of orbit in Mar., 2001.