Explanation:
With most of our blue planet covered by water, it's little wonder that, centuries ago, the oceans were believed to hide mysterious creatures including sea serpents and mermaids. Merfolk (mermaids and mermen) are, of course, the marine version of half-human, half-animal legends that have captured human imagination for ages. One source, the "Arabian Nights," described mermaids as having "moon faces and hair like a woman's but their hands and feet were in their bellies and they had tails like fishes."
C.J.S. Thompson, a former curator at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, notes in his book "The Mystery and Lore of Monsters" that "Traditions concerning creatures half-human and half-fish in form have existed for thousands of years, and the Babylonian deity Era or Oannes, the Fish-god ... is usually depicted as having a bearded head with a crown and a body like a man, but from the waist downwards he has the shape of a fish." Greek mythology contains stories of the god Triton, the merman messenger of the sea, and several modern religions including Hinduism and Candomble (an Afro-Brazilian belief) worship mermaid goddesses to this day.
All of the given options represent NASA future projects:
- Use a probe to collect data- Parker Solar Probe will be the first-ever mission to study the Sun from such a small distance. The spacecraft will travel directly into the Sun's atmosphere about 4 million miles from the surface.
- Improve aviation technology- NASA is currently working on the development of the new experimental aircraft X-plane which will prove the dramatic benefits of advanced technologies in piloted flight.
- Conduct research from a space station- Humans are already living and working on board of the International Space Station which is one-of-a-kind research laboratory in microgravity. A portion of the astronauts time aboard the space station has been designated for national laboratory investigations.
- Collect samples on an asteroid- First asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, arrives at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in December 2018 and should return a sample for study in 2023.
- Conduct an unmanned space mission- InSight Mars lander is set to study the planet’s interior. The Mars 2020 rover will search for signs of past microbial life, gather samples for future return to Earth and investigate resources. The James Webb Space Telescope will be the premier observatory of the next decade, studying every phase in the history of our Universe in infrared
Force (N) = mass (kg) × acceleration (m/s²)
