In this episode of Let's Dive In, RTÉjr Radio's science show, join Julie and Phil as they launch into space with a real live astronaut and a satellite engineer to find out if astronauts, and satellites, wear sun cream up in space.
Tune in to RTÉjr Radio at 7pm this evening or press play above now!
Instead of diving in, we're launching off into space with our question: "Do astronauts wear sun cream?"
Who better to answer this, than a real life astronaut!
Bruce Melnick, a retired astronaut who flew into space twice. The first time on the Discovery mission in 1990, and the second on the Endeavour shuttle in 1992.
Now, he’s based at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex where, if you’re lucky enough to live in the area in Florida, you can go and meet him in person and ask him all about his adventures in space.
However, we were lucky enough that he joined us on the show. He shared great stories with us about how his body adapted to being in space; about how he was part of a 3-person space walk (the only time that this has EVER happened); about how he engraved his name into the wing of the Endeavour shuttle!
You heard it here first!!
And as always on our show, we don’t just answer the original question...We dive in, go down the rabbit hole, take twists and turns and learn a heap of new things. Often the answer to the original question brings about more questions. So, we wanted to know: Do satellites wear sun cream in space?
Enter UCD satellite engineer David McKeown. He joins us on the show to talk about EIRSAT1 - Ireland’s first satellite, and about cows in space!
As always, we’ve also got a fun little experiment for you to try at home. This time, it’s about demonstrating how sun cream works.
What you’ll need:
- Sun cream
- A paintbrush
- A UV torch (in Ireland these are available at local shops. I got mine for a few quid on Amazon)
- What you’ll do:
- Use a very small amount of sun cream and paint or write something on your skin
- Shine the UV torch onto the picture/words you’ve created!
And watch it "glow"!
So how does this work? Well, the whole point of sun cream is that it blocks and absorbs the Ultraviolet or UV light from hitting your skin - this is the kind of light that the sun produces that can cause you some harm.
Inside the sun cream there are minerals like zinc oxide that reflect the sun’s UV rays before they hit your skin.
The UV torch acts like a beam of sunlight. So when you shine the UV torch onto the sun cream, the sun cream blocks and scatters the UV light so that it cannot get to your skin and cause damage.
That’s why you can see the sun cream glow!
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AND read all the Let's Dive In articles with experiments to try at home HERE!
