Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marcia for RADIOI. Today I will be
Speaker 1: reading National Geographic Magazine dated October twenty twenty five, which
Speaker 1: is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI is
Speaker 1: a reading service intended for people who are blind or
Speaker 1: have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
Speaker 1: Please join me now for the first article titled The
Speaker 1: Curious Case of the Tigers who Change their Stripes by
Speaker 1: prosanjit Ya Dove. A century ago, India's tigers or on
Speaker 1: the brink of extinction. Slowly their numbers have rebounded, but
Speaker 1: that ecological success has prompted a dire new problem and
Speaker 1: a race to save many of them from genetic collapse.
Speaker 1: It took fifty days of searching before the jungle revealed
Speaker 1: its biggest secret to us. Fifty days of jostling along
Speaker 1: gravel roads in the Similipal Tiger Reserve in India's eastern
Speaker 1: state of Odisha, scanning between trees in the semi evergreen forest,
Speaker 1: hoping for a glimpse of an evolusive tiger called T twelve,
Speaker 1: whose striking appearance has made him a symbol of a
Speaker 1: population at a perilous cross roads. My partner in the quest.
Speaker 1: Ragu Porti, a staffer with the regional forest department, had
Speaker 1: never set eyes on TA twelve. Most of his colleagues
Speaker 1: had only ever seen the tiger in images from camera
Speaker 1: traps set up to study animal movements throughout the reserve.
Speaker 1: But actually laying eyes on Simla Pal's tigers lets forest
Speaker 1: officials look for physical ailments that cameras may not capture,
Speaker 1: and also provides a reminder that there's a living, breathing
Speaker 1: purpose to the countless hours they spend patrolling in the
Speaker 1: sweltering heat. A documented sighting of T twelve would be
Speaker 1: particularly valuable since the reclusive ten year old tiger, the
Speaker 1: eldest male in Similipal, was right then at the heart
Speaker 1: of a plan to ensure the survival of future generations.
Speaker 1: It was late in the afternoon of day fifty when
Speaker 1: in the blink of an eye, a dark shape dashed
Speaker 1: out in front of our pickup truck. I slammed on
Speaker 1: the brakes ahead of us. Spanning the width of the road,
Speaker 1: an enormous tiger stared back at Ragu and me. It
Speaker 1: was an older male, clear from its size, and it
Speaker 1: had exactly the strange distinctive coat we'd been looking for
Speaker 1: it's black, Ragu said, in an insistent whisper. He pointed
Speaker 1: excitedly and repeated himself, it's black. The tiger T twelve
Speaker 1: had dark fur that draped over him like a ragged cloak.
Speaker 1: Slivers of orange peeked through along his body, with thicker
Speaker 1: patches appearing on his face and front legs. This uncanny
Speaker 1: widening of a tiger's black stripes, a rare genetic mutation
Speaker 1: known as pseudo melanism, is shared among roughly half the
Speaker 1: thirty or so tigers that roam the Similipal reserve and
Speaker 1: its an indicator of a conservation's success story. Facing a
Speaker 1: potentially catastrophic complication because while the number of tigers in
Speaker 1: Similopol is more robust than it has been in decades,
Speaker 1: the reserve is geographically isolated from other tiger populations, a
Speaker 1: tiger island, so to speak, with a dangerously dwindling gene pool.
Speaker 1: But during the weeks that Ragu and I scoured the
Speaker 1: area for Tea twelve, work was under way elsewhere to
Speaker 1: find him a suitable mate. It was a crucial step
Speaker 1: in a targeted breeding program years in development, a mission
Speaker 1: shared between conservation agents and a team of groundbreaking molecular
Speaker 1: ecologists and genetic experts, all working to save the tigers
Speaker 1: of Similopol from inbreeding themselves out of existence. In many ways,
Speaker 1: India's tigers have faced the same challenges as big cats
Speaker 1: throughout the world have hunted to near extinction by trophy
Speaker 1: hunters amid relentless habit destruction and fragmentation. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: alarm over the iconic species decline prompted the establishment of
Speaker 1: a state run reserve system, but the reserves lacked coordinated
Speaker 1: monitoring and enforcement until two thousand and five, when India
Speaker 1: created a dedicated central agency, the National Tiger Conservation Authority NTCA,
Speaker 1: which today hires and trains rangers, manages scientific oversight, and
Speaker 1: guides habitat preservation across fifty eight reserves. A key concept
Speaker 1: underlying the reserve system is that tigers are typically able
Speaker 1: to travel between protected areas using what are known as
Speaker 1: natural corridors patches of connecting forests and other prey abundant lands.
Speaker 1: There are a number of benefits to these corridors, but
Speaker 1: the most important is that they encourage breeding among neighboring
Speaker 1: tiger populations, improving genetic diversity. Similopol, at a little o
Speaker 1: over one thousand square miles, is one of India's largest
Speaker 1: reserves and its closest neighboring ones. Set Kosia to the
Speaker 1: southwest and Sundarban to the east, are both more than
Speaker 1: one hundred miles away, which isn't too far for a
Speaker 1: tiger to walk, but there are no tigers left in
Speaker 1: sat Kosia and no adequate corridor connects Similipal and Sundarban.
Speaker 1: The land between them is mostly urban or agricultural Kolkata
Speaker 1: its suburbs and a vast area of rice fields with
Speaker 1: very little forest cover, which is where tigers prefer to
Speaker 1: stay hidden. Dozens of towns and villages separate Similipal from
Speaker 1: its two neighboring reserves. As well. For tigers, there is
Speaker 1: just no easy way in or out of Similipol. When
Speaker 1: the NTCA surveyed wild tigers across India in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, Natalia was roughly fourteen hundred animals, down from
Speaker 1: an estimated forty thousand a century before. In Similopol, the
Speaker 1: population bottomed out at just four tigers in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: only one of them mail, but in twenty fifteen a
Speaker 1: year or so before he died, the male fathered T
Speaker 1: twelve with his strange, predominantly black coat, and T twelve
Speaker 1: has since fathered male cubs of his own. India's tiger
Speaker 1: population has begun to rebound over the past twenty years,
Speaker 1: thanks in large part to the conservation work of the
Speaker 1: NTCA and forest officials. As of a twenty twenty two estimate,
Speaker 1: the country is home to more than thirty one hundred tigers,
Speaker 1: and as Similipoul's population climbed slowly but steadily over the
Speaker 1: past decade, the growing number of tigers at first seemed
Speaker 1: like a microcosm of the national success story. Soon though,
Speaker 1: the reserve's managers began noticing more and more young tigers
Speaker 1: sporting the same dark coat as T twelve. The mutation,
Speaker 1: as far as both foresters and genetic scientists can tell,
Speaker 1: is harmless, merely a cosmetic oddity caused by a random
Speaker 1: and naturally occurring quirk of DNA, but experts say it
Speaker 1: is also a tangible manifestation of a very real problem.
Speaker 1: If this mutation was able to pass so quickly through
Speaker 1: Similopaul's population, with all the tigers sharing very similar genetic
Speaker 1: makeup due to rampant inbreeding. Then so too could more
Speaker 1: serious abnormalities. Now, the task facing some of the some
Speaker 1: of India's foremost tiger authorities has shifted from recovering tiger
Speaker 1: numbers to breaking this cycle of inbreeding before it's too late.
Speaker 1: Playing genetic matchmaker for tigers is tricky. In order to
Speaker 1: find the ideal breeding partners for T twelve in his offspring,
Speaker 1: the would be saviors of Simili Paul needed to understand
Speaker 1: the differences among not only the tigers that roam today,
Speaker 1: but also the tigers of the past. That's what led
Speaker 1: molecular collegist Uma Rama Krishnan not long ago into a
Speaker 1: dimly lit trophy room in a grand home in Akhaltara,
Speaker 1: a small town in central India. Rama Krishnan, a National
Speaker 1: geographic explorer in the head of a lab at Bengaluru's
Speaker 1: Bangalore National Center for Biological Sciences, was invited there by
Speaker 1: an Anupam Singh Sisodia, whose family had since held the
Speaker 1: role of chieftains across fifty one villages and the surrounding
Speaker 1: forests and farmland, responsible for protecting the locals from dangerous wildlife.
Speaker 1: His family had done its share of hunting, and the
Speaker 1: room was full of mounted black bucks, sloth bears, and
Speaker 1: four horned antelope collected between nineteen twenty and nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: But laid out on a table before Rama Krishnan was
Speaker 1: a set of tiger pelts, their massive heads intact and
Speaker 1: seemingly snarling. Killing problematic tigers Sisodia acknowledged was more of
Speaker 1: a political necessity than a pleasure. Since two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: Rama Krishnan and her fellow researchers and students at the
Speaker 1: lab have been collecting samples of tiger DNA in order
Speaker 1: to build an extensive genetic map of the diversity among
Speaker 1: India's tigers. She secured roughly two hundred and fifty specimens
Speaker 1: from historic estates like the Sisodias. She has plumed taxidermy
Speaker 1: collections at sites like the National History Museum in London,
Speaker 1: and ventured into Indian jungles to procure scat, blood, hair
Speaker 1: and saliva from live tigers. All that evidence has given
Speaker 1: her critical insight into how the animals have changed over
Speaker 1: generations as they moved throughout the region. Closely inspecting one
Speaker 1: of her tiger heads, Rama Krishnan slid her scalpel into
Speaker 1: the eighty something year old pelt. Practiced and precise. She
Speaker 1: sliced off a small piece the sample into a vial
Speaker 1: and held it up. This is the real treasure, she said.
Speaker 1: When Ramakrishnan first began building her DNA database, her goal
Speaker 1: was to answer questions about tigers that couldn't be answered
Speaker 1: by observing them in the field. As their population was decimated.
Speaker 1: Tiger's loss not only territory, but also substantial genetic diversity.
Speaker 1: Historic historical DNA offered important clues about what else might
Speaker 1: exist within the gene pool. Her research became ever more
Speaker 1: relevant in twenty seventeen when the antca alarmed by the
Speaker 1: dark coated tigers in Similopaul, asked her to formally study
Speaker 1: the reserve's tigers. The forest officials clearly saw that the
Speaker 1: impacts of the reserve's isolation were becoming measurable. They hoped
Speaker 1: Ramakrishnan could both verify the genetic culprit and help them
Speaker 1: find a solution. Once she took a closer look at
Speaker 1: the animals sequestered within the reserve, Ramakrishnan quickly realized that
Speaker 1: the recessive pseudo melanism gene was spreading through the population.
Speaker 1: The genetic isolation on display, she said, was a ticking
Speaker 1: time bomb. Left unaddressed, it could prove devastating to the
Speaker 1: reserve's tigers. It's impossible to know precisely what other maladies
Speaker 1: genetic mutations among big cats might introduce, But when Rama
Speaker 1: Krishnan and her colleagues analyzed a genetic mutation data set
Speaker 1: for the closest available comparison domestic cats, they found that
Speaker 1: these not so distant cousins faced issues like retinal atrophy,
Speaker 1: kidney disease, and hyperthyroidism, and with female tigers averaging litters
Speaker 1: of two to three cubs every two to three years,
Speaker 1: health issues can quickly and dramatically compound. We're still trying
Speaker 1: to understand the full impact of this inbreeding, she says.
Speaker 1: But when thing's for sure, there's no upside to this
Speaker 1: kind of genetic erosion. Given Similopaul's lack of connection to
Speaker 1: other reserves, Rama Krishnan's recommendation was that wildlife managers identify
Speaker 1: a few tigers from a separate reserve and translocate them.
Speaker 1: Once in Similipol, the tigrises the forest managers elected to
Speaker 1: move females would hopefully reproduce with T twelve or with
Speaker 1: his male offspring, which have begun to claim pieces of
Speaker 1: T twelve's territory as they mature and have cubs of
Speaker 1: their own. This Rama Krishnan said would begin the overdue
Speaker 1: effort to diversify the reserve's genetic pool. By comparing Similipol
Speaker 1: tiger DNA to the array of records in her data set,
Speaker 1: she found that the most genetically diverse tigers with the
Speaker 1: lowest chance of more negative genes showing up in any
Speaker 1: future offspring, were located in a reserve called Todoba Anddari
Speaker 1: in the dense Tik forests of the district of Chandrapur,
Speaker 1: halfway across India. Of course, Ramakrishnan knew that identifying their
Speaker 1: right reserve is one thing. Actually moving a three hundred
Speaker 1: pound wild animal hundreds of miles across the country is another.
Speaker 1: One morning last fall, Ravikante Cobro Cobragade stood up from
Speaker 1: his spot in the open air back seat of a
Speaker 1: two door Maruti Gipsy and looked out onto the Chandrapur landscape.
Speaker 1: The wildlife veterinarian turned his attention to his a shooter,
Speaker 1: A J. Marathe, who was cradling a tranquilizer gun and
Speaker 1: gestured to a young tigris just up ahead. I can
Speaker 1: see her. She is sitting in that bush ahead, looking
Speaker 1: at us, Cobragade said. The tigris, later named Jumuna, was
Speaker 1: twenty eight months old and had spent all her life
Speaker 1: in or near the Tadoba Reserve. Her youth meant she
Speaker 1: hadn't yet established territory there, and crucially, she had no
Speaker 1: history of conflict with humans. Both of these things made
Speaker 1: her a prime translocation candidate. Translocation work, particularly for animals
Speaker 1: as large and territorial as tigers, is highly sensitive under
Speaker 1: any circumstances, and in India's tiger reserves it requires a
Speaker 1: large number of verifications and approvals before it can proceed.
Speaker 1: High on the list of consideration is whether an area
Speaker 1: identified as having candidates has a population healthy enough to
Speaker 1: withstand losing breeding age females. In Tadoba, this is not
Speaker 1: a concern. Although the reserve is two thirds the size
Speaker 1: of Similipal, it is home to roughly ninety five tigers,
Speaker 1: and it is no tiger island. Natural corridors connect to
Speaker 1: Doba to the umrad Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary around forty miles
Speaker 1: to the north, the Nawagioan Nagzira River Reserve seventy miles
Speaker 1: to the northeast, and the Kawal Tiger Reserve seventy miles
Speaker 1: to the southwest. Tadoba's tigers regularly venture out in search
Speaker 1: of more forested space, and as their numbers have swelled
Speaker 1: over the past decade, all their movement has meant that
Speaker 1: tigers and people in the surrounding mosaic of forests, villages
Speaker 1: and farm lands have had to learn how to live
Speaker 1: alongside one another. Again, most important for Tea twelve and
Speaker 1: his kin, the network of connected reserves has allowed for
Speaker 1: a constant exchange of tiger jeans. Jamuna would be the
Speaker 1: first of two Tadoba tigers translocated to Similipal in a
Speaker 1: matter of weeks, with others to potentially follow in the
Speaker 1: coming months and years if the experiment went well. But
Speaker 1: first she needed to be sedated. Is the dark ready, Sir,
Speaker 1: asked Marath. Maratha. The tigris rose from her spot in
Speaker 1: the bush and marched closer to their vehicle. When she
Speaker 1: was around five yards away, Maratha calmly removed the safety
Speaker 1: key from his dart gun, brought the scope to his
Speaker 1: eye and took the shot. The pink tailed projectile land
Speaker 1: landed in Jamuna his thigh, prompting a lar loud growl
Speaker 1: that aqued across the landscape. As she bounded away, She
Speaker 1: made it about two hundred yards before the tranquilizer took
Speaker 1: its toll. The team found her laid out in a meadow.
Speaker 1: It took seven men to carefully slide Jamuna onto a
Speaker 1: stretcher and move her into the shade. Cobragade checked her
Speaker 1: for injuries and drew a blood sample. After he fixed
Speaker 1: a GPS collar around her neck, the team moved her
Speaker 1: into a metal cage aboard a truck. Once safely inside,
Speaker 1: Jemuna was given a revival drug. Within minutes, the men
Speaker 1: heard rustling and banging the sound of her nails scratching
Speaker 1: against metal, followed by a roar. The road trip to
Speaker 1: deliver Jamuna to Similipol took twenty eight hours. The truck
Speaker 1: was joined by a small convoy of support staff. The
Speaker 1: route had been carefully mapped to circumvent major cities and
Speaker 1: other areas where loud noises could cause Jimuna distress. Every
Speaker 1: few hours, the vehicles pulled over for a while to
Speaker 1: allow her to rest. Finally, the door opened and Jemunah
Speaker 1: leaped through the gate leading into her new home, a
Speaker 1: two and a half acre enclosure in Similopol, where she
Speaker 1: spent almost two weeks acclimating. After that, the gate opened
Speaker 1: once more, this time with no cage on the other side,
Speaker 1: she was set free into the territory of t twelve.
Speaker 1: When it comes to restoring diversity among India's wild tigers,
Speaker 1: one critical step remained solely under nature's control. Mating and
Speaker 1: tigers engage in selective courtships before they breed, so in November,
Speaker 1: less than a month after Jamuna was released into the reserve,
Speaker 1: a second female tiger from Tadoba called zee Nott, was
Speaker 1: sedated and transferred to an enclosure in Similopol. Whereas Jamuna
Speaker 1: settled into the Similopol landscape with relative ease, the stress
Speaker 1: of the relocation took a greater toll on ze Noot,
Speaker 1: and she quickly wandered beyond the reserve's borders. The forest Department,
Speaker 1: not wanting her to stray too far, sent a team
Speaker 1: out a tranquil her and bring her back to spend
Speaker 1: several more weeks in an enclosure to acclimate before she
Speaker 1: was released into T twelve's territory. Both she and Jamunah
Speaker 1: wore GPS collars so that forest officials could track their
Speaker 1: movement and behavior. Knowing where the tigers were, forest officers
Speaker 1: on the ground used night vision cameras to observe them
Speaker 1: from a safe distance. They kept a close eye on
Speaker 1: the pair to see whether either of them would cross
Speaker 1: paths with T twelve or other males, but the observers
Speaker 1: only saw Jemuna and zeenat alone. Tiger courtship, by contrast,
Speaker 1: is conspicuous. A pair of mating tigers might spend weeks
Speaker 1: together walking through the forest and vocalizing. Yet, as the
Speaker 1: tigres's established territory in Similapal, forest officials never saw any
Speaker 1: evidence that they so much as had contact with T
Speaker 1: twelve until one night in May. Reviewing the feed from
Speaker 1: a mounted camera that takes thermal and visual images, the
Speaker 1: forest department captured footage of Xenot with T twelve. It
Speaker 1: was unmistakable evidence their mating ritual had begun. The courtship,
Speaker 1: citing signaled that the genetic rescue mission, if not yet
Speaker 1: an outright success holds promise. Meanwhile, this summer, as the
Speaker 1: teams behind the translocation awaited Xenot's first litter of cubs,
Speaker 1: the work continued. Rama Krishnan and her students collected more
Speaker 1: hair and scat samples left behind by Similo Paul tigers
Speaker 1: to better understand the genetic variation within the population. Officials
Speaker 1: are hopeful that Jamuna will eventually find a mate, and
Speaker 1: everyone working in Simila Paul is eager to see whether
Speaker 1: Xenot's cubs are born with T twelve's pseudo melanism. It's
Speaker 1: not yet decided whether or when the reserve will receive
Speaker 1: more translocated tigresses, or how many more might be needed
Speaker 1: to introduce sufficient genetic variability, but until a quarter links
Speaker 1: Similo Paul to other populated tiger reserves, more translocations could
Speaker 1: be the only viable option looking ahead, Similipaul Field director
Speaker 1: Prakash Chand Gogginini said his personal hope is that Samilopaul's
Speaker 1: tigers can become a source population that helps return the
Speaker 1: species to places like the near Pye sat Kosia Reserve.
Speaker 1: That might happen with the help of a translocated Similopaul tigris,
Speaker 1: or perhaps via new quarters, even if the latter are
Speaker 1: still likely decades away. Witnessing all of this firsthand, seeing
Speaker 1: the pitfalls that India's tigers face as they begin to
Speaker 1: make their comeback returns me to certain moments from my childhood.
Speaker 1: I grew up on a farm not far from Chandrapur,
Speaker 1: where my life revolved around animals and jungles. For better
Speaker 1: or for worse. Naming pet dogs was painful as leopards
Speaker 1: regularly took them away, and every now and then we
Speaker 1: would encounter a pug mark similar to a leopard's, but
Speaker 1: much better. The air would fill with fear and excitement
Speaker 1: at the realization we were sharing space with the true
Speaker 1: apex predator. The experience of living alongside something that powerful
Speaker 1: and elusive shaped how I saw the forest and my
Speaker 1: place within it. I never came across a tiger at
Speaker 1: our farm, but I often dreamed of it. In the
Speaker 1: years since, I have seen, studied, and photographed countless tigers,
Speaker 1: but none of them looked like what I saw that
Speaker 1: day in Similopaul. While sitting in the idling truck with
Speaker 1: Ragu locked in a momentary steering contest with t twelve
Speaker 1: I didn't reach for my camera, I didn't move. There
Speaker 1: stood a black tiger, a testament to human's best intentions
Speaker 1: gone wrong. In the best case scenario. For Samilopaul, this
Speaker 1: will someday be a rare and unforgettable creature, one that
Speaker 1: inspired a new discipline for safeguarding the species. In that moment,
Speaker 1: for four seconds in the roadway, it felt like a
Speaker 1: miracle of nature. Then, without a roar or a snarl,
Speaker 1: T twelve took a few powerful strides and vanished into
Speaker 1: the thick evergreen forest, bringing tigers together. After being decimated
Speaker 1: by hunting and habitat destruction, India's tiger population has begun
Speaker 1: to recover in protected reserves, but in less connected areas
Speaker 1: like Similopol, sometimes called tiger islands. In Breeding has become
Speaker 1: an issue for reserves like Tadoba and Dari. Interconnected habitats
Speaker 1: and wildlife corridors help diversify the population and may offer
Speaker 1: a solution for tiger islands. Landscape of the tiger forests
Speaker 1: provide spaces for tigers to rest and breed along with
Speaker 1: ample prey. Although agricultural lands interrupt forest cover, tigers can
Speaker 1: move across them between reserves, but highway and urban areas
Speaker 1: remain difficult barriers the benefits of linked reserves. In reserves
Speaker 1: with good connectivity, like Toadoba, tigers roame hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: along corridors to find mates among neighboring populations the pitfalls
Speaker 1: of a Tiger Island. Tigers and reserves with no populations
Speaker 1: to mix with have limited mating options. In Similopaul, this
Speaker 1: has led to the rapid increase of a coat color
Speaker 1: mutation the power of moving tigers. Given Similopaul's isolation from
Speaker 1: linked reserves, forest officials have begun to translocate tigers four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles from Totoba to the Tiger Island
Speaker 1: in eastern India. Next. Can We Save the orbiting Treasures
Speaker 1: of the Space Race? By Brian Kevin. As human made
Speaker 1: objects proliferate proliferate in space, a coalition of scientists and
Speaker 1: historians have floated retrieving some of the most important In
Speaker 1: one view. Vanguard I is space junk, an antennaied aluminum
Speaker 1: ball that Soviet leader, the Kita Khrushchev dismissively compared to
Speaker 1: a grapefruit. The United States launched it in March nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight and the satellite returned radio signals until May
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Defunct since it's the oldest human made
Speaker 1: object in orbit, but to space historian Matt Bill that
Speaker 1: grapefruit is one of the most precious objects of the
Speaker 1: early space age, deserving of a place in the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: and scientists he says, could glean much from it about
Speaker 1: long term exposure to space. Billy, along with a few
Speaker 1: like minded engineers and historians, made this case at a
Speaker 1: recent conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Speaker 1: presenting detailed plans for a hypothetical mission to de orbit
Speaker 1: Vanguard one and bring it home. The idea has turned heads,
Speaker 1: not least for challenging a preference for n C two
Speaker 1: preservation that's increasingly enshrined in heritage fields, including the burgeoning
Speaker 1: discipline of space archaeology. Old satellites need to be left
Speaker 1: where they are, says Alice Gorman, who sits on the
Speaker 1: International Council on Monuments and Sites Aerospace Committee. They're safer
Speaker 1: in orbit, she says, where they belong to no one
Speaker 1: nation and can be studied via photography and other remote
Speaker 1: sensing methods. But space is getting crowded. Bill notes more
Speaker 1: than fourteen thousand satellites orbit the Earth, to say nothing
Speaker 1: of debris. He and his co authors frame their technical
Speaker 1: paper as a thought experiment, should we ever consider nabbing
Speaker 1: historically significant satellites which might merit consideration. They offer eleven
Speaker 1: more candidates, each a national first or a pioneering mission,
Speaker 1: and all conceivably retrievable. Billis says, if one dreams big.
Speaker 1: Vanguard on US launched on March seventeenth, nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit, the second U S satellite in orbit.
Speaker 1: The first Explorer one burned up upon re entry in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. Its most distinguished contribution was to confirm, via
Speaker 1: variations in its orbit, that Earth was less round than supposed.
Speaker 1: Bulging around the equator Luna ie USSR January two, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, solar orbit, a yoga ball to Vanguard's one
Speaker 1: grapefruit and the first spacecraft to escape Earth's gravity. The
Speaker 1: Soviets aimed for the Moon and missed by some thirty
Speaker 1: seven hundred miles. Luna one became instead the first spacecraft
Speaker 1: to settle into orbit around the Sun. Pioneer four US
Speaker 1: March three, nineteen fifty nine solar orbit. Like Luna On
Speaker 1: the first American craft to travel around Earth's orbit, also
Speaker 1: blew its objective, passing too far from the Moon to
Speaker 1: photograph it as planned. It returned good data, though on
Speaker 1: the Earth's encircling radiation belts. Tiros Ie US April one,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty Low Earth Orbit. Today we take weather observation
Speaker 1: satellites for granted, but when Nassau sent up its first
Speaker 1: time tamped at one, a flying Ladies hatbox, as one
Speaker 1: Newsrael called tiros one, just how useful it would be
Speaker 1: for forecasting was still an open question. Telstar US July tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two. Low Earth Orbit, the first ever active
Speaker 1: communications satellite, sporadically relayed TV images across the Atlantic until,
Speaker 1: as space historian Matt Bill puts it, we sort of
Speaker 1: killed it by accident. Radiation from a high altitude nuclear
Speaker 1: test knocked it out after seven months. Luette I, Canada
Speaker 1: September twenty ninth, nineteen sixty two, Low Earth Orbit. Canada
Speaker 1: became the third nation in space with this workhourse, which
Speaker 1: sent back some two million data snapshots of the iconosphere,
Speaker 1: the atmospheric layer that reflects radio waves during a record
Speaker 1: setting ten years in operation. This concludes readings from National
Speaker 1: Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marshall. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.