More Space Facts - PlanetFacts.net Extremely Interesting Facts on the Planets, Stars and the Universe. If one were to capture and bottle a comet's 10,000 mile vapor trail, the amount of vapor actually present in the bottle would take up less than 1 cubic inch of space. Members of the Dogon tribe in Mali, Africa, for many centuries worshiped a star known today by astronomers as Sirius B. The Dogon people knew its precise elliptical orbit, knew how long it took to revolve around its parent star, Sirius, and were aware that it was made up of materials not found on Earth—all this centuries before modern astronomers had even discovered that Sirius B existed. Deimos, one of the moons of mars, rises and sets twice a day. To an observer standing on Pluto, the sun would appear no brighter than Venus appears in our evening sky. Saturn's rings are 500,000 miles in circumference but only about a foot thick. Five times as many meteors can be seen after midnight as can be seen before. The star Antares is 60,000 times larger than our sun.
Neil Armstrong American astronaut and lunar explorer (1930–2012) Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash. Early life and education Armstrong was born near Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930, the son of Viola Louise (née Engel) and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. At age 17, in 1947, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; he was the second person in his family to attend college.
Planets - Zoom Astronomy Advertisement. EnchantedLearning.com is a user-supported site. As a bonus, site members have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site, with print-friendly pages.Click here to learn more. (Already a member? The Planets (plus the Dwarf Planet Pluto) Our solar system consists of the sun, eight planets, moons, many dwarf planets (or plutoids), an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and others. The eight planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Easy ways to remember the order of the planets (plus Pluto) are the mnemonics: "My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas" and "My Very Easy Method Just Simplifies Us Naming Planets" The first letter of each of these words represents a planet - in the correct order. The largest planet is Jupiter. The inner planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Generally, the farther from the Sun, the cooler the planet. Density of the Planets The Earth is the densest planet.
The Coming Age of Space Colonization - James Fallows A crescent earth rises above the lunar horizon. (NASA/Reuters) The subject of our discussion was the future of space travel. Below is an extended-play version of the interview, with extra questions and themes. James Fallows: Space exploration seems to have lost its hold on the public imagination, compared with a generation ago. Eric Anderson: I think absolutely they are right to feel a little bit disappointed. So I think the reality is that space was unnaturally accelerated by this Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1960s. So that part of the industry has gone pretty well. JF: Why should people be excited about what lies ahead? EA: In the next generation or two—say the next 30 to 60 years—there will be an irreversible human migration to a permanent space colony. JF: I have to ask—really? EA: I really do believe it will. JF: Apart from the cost of transport, what are the challenges in making that a reality? EA: I think it's all about the economics.
How Orbits Work What an Orbit Really Is The drawings at the right simplify the physics of orbiting Earth. We see Earth with a huge, tall mountain rising from it. The mountain, as Isaac Newton first envisioned, has a cannon at the top. When the cannon is fired, the cannonball follows its ballistic arc, falling as a result of Earth's gravity, and it hits Earth some distance away from the mountain. If we put more gunpowder in the cannon, the next time it's fired, the cannonball goes halfway around the planet before it hits the ground. If you were riding along with the cannonball, you would feel as if you were falling. Getting Into Orbit The cannonball provides us with a pretty good analogy. Raise It Up (the mountain) to a high enough altitude so that Earth's atmosphere isn't going to slow it down too much. Apogee Kick How does a satellite get from low earth orbit (where the shuttle lets go of it) to geosynchronous orbit? Elliptical Orbits: most orbits are not perfectly circular. Gimme More! Questions
Top 10 Facts About Space Food Space may be the final frontier, but it is also one hell of a restaurant. Over the the past half-century, scientists and space engineers have not only been racing to get their rockets safely outside the Earth’s atmosphere, they’ve been working to ensure the menu keeps their astronauts coming back for more. While there have been all sorts of innovations and improvements, it seems now the options are better than ever, to where we might consider studying rocket science just to gain access to NASA’s kitchen. While these days it seems there is little hope in revisiting space any time soon, here are ten facts about space food, to give us food for thought as we wait until we can become weightless once more. Fact: Early Space Food Was Weird. When Yuri Gagarin become the first human being to go into outer space, he also become the first to eat and do whatever else a human must as a necessary condition of survival. Fact: Regular Foods are Eaten in Space Now. Fact: Jerky is Huge in Space.
Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with an altitude between 160 kilometers (99 mi), with an orbital period of about 88 minutes, and 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi), with an orbital period of about 127 minutes. Objects below approximately 160 kilometers (99 mi) will experience very rapid orbital decay and altitude loss.[1][2] With the exception of the manned lunar flights of the Apollo program, all human spaceflights have taken place in LEO (or were suborbital). The altitude record for a human spaceflight in LEO was Gemini 11 with an apogee of 1,374.1 kilometers (853.8 mi). All manned space stations to date, as well as the majority of artificial satellites, have been in LEO. Orbital characteristics[edit] Objects in LEO encounter atmospheric drag in the form of gases in the thermosphere (approximately 80–500 km up) or exosphere (approximately 500 km and up), depending on orbit height. Equatorial low Earth orbits (ELEO) are a subset of LEO. Use of LEO[edit] Examples[edit]
Top 10 Cool Facts about Space Space There is still so little known about outer space by modern science, but of that little we do know, there are some extraordinarily amazing things. This is a list of the top 10 cool facts about Space. 10. Fact: If you put Saturn in water it would float The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant glass of water it would float. 9. Fact: We are moving through space at the rate of 530km a second Our Galaxy – the Milky Way is spinning at a rate of 225 kilometers per second. 8. Fact: The moon is drifting away from Earth Every year the moon moves about 3.8cm further away from the Earth. 7. Fact: The light hitting the earth right now is 30 thousand years old The energy in the sunlight we see today started out in the core of the Sun 30,000 years ago – it spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun! 6. Fact: The Sun loses up to a billion kilograms a second due to solar winds 5. 4. 3. 2.
Orbits in Space Atmospheric Re-entry The Kepler formula also applies to elliptical motion, provided R is replaced by the semi-major axis a of the orbit. Over time however orbits stray from exact Keplerian ellipses because to additional forces, such as the attraction of the Moon and the Sun. Atmospheric friction also causes low-altitude satellites to re-enter, sooner or later: all these, as they lose energy, descend deeper and deeper into the atmosphere, and ultimately reach denser regions, where they burn up. Meanwhile the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle arrived, a more active peak than NASA had hoped for, bringing a greater intensity of solar x-rays and extreme ultra-violet radiation. The Bulge of the Earth If the Earth were a perfect sphere, orbit calculations could assume that all its mass was concentrated at its center: the force, at least outside the Earth, would have been exactly the same. That modifies the orbits of satellites and must be taken into account. Lagrangian Points
Milky Way Stars and gases at a wide range of distances from the Galactic center orbit at approximately 220 kilometers per second. The constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests that much of the mass of the Milky Way does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This mass has been given the name “dark matter”.[22] The rotational period is about 240 million years at the position of the Sun.[9] The Galaxy as a whole is moving at a velocity of approximately 600 km per second with respect to extragalactic frames of reference. The oldest known star in the Galaxy is at least 13.6 billion years old and thus must have formed shortly after the Big Bang.[6] Surrounded by several smaller satellite galaxies, the Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which forms a subcomponent of the Virgo Supercluster. Appearance[edit] The Milky Way has a relatively low surface brightness. Size and mass[edit] Schematic illustration showing the galaxy in profile
HSF > Living In Space > SPACE WEAR Astronauts wear various types of clothing for all aspects of a mission to space. Whether preparing for launch, working inside the space shuttle or the space station, working outside in space, or landing back on Earth, astronauts wear the proper garments for both comfort and protection. Space Station Clothing International Space Station crewmembers choose the shirts, shorts and pants they will wear in space months before they are scheduled to launch. Space station crews can choose from either Russian or U.S. clothing supplies. Because it's expensive to take supplies into space and there's no washing machine aboard the space station -- in order to save water -- station crews don't change clothes as often as people do on Earth. On average, station crewmembers get one pair of shorts and a T-shirt for every three days of exercising. When a piece of clothing has been worn as many times as possible, it's placed in a bag for disposal. Space Shuttle Clothing Launch and Landing
The Milky Way Our own galaxy consists of about 200 billion stars, with our own Sun being a fairly typical specimen. It is a fairly large spiral galaxy and it has three main components: a disk, in which the solar system resides, a central bulge at the core, and an all encompassing halo. The spiral galaxy M83 which is believed to be similar in size and shape to the Milky Way (AAO) Disk: The disk of the Milky Way has four spiral arms and it is approximately 300pc thick and 30kpc in diameter. It is made up predominantly of Population I stars which tend to be blue and are reasonably young, spanning an age range between a million and ten billion years. Bulge: The bulge, at the centre of the galaxy, is a flattened spheroid of dimension 1kpc by 6kpc. Halo: The halo, which is a diffuse spherical region, surrounds the disk. A view of the Milky Way from the southern hemisphere - towards the centre of our galaxy (AAO) [Back][Hot big bang][Galaxies][Relic radiation][Cosmic strings][Inflation][Cosmology][Next]
Milky Way (chocolate bar) The Milky Way bar was created in 1923 by Frank C. Mars and originally manufactured in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The name and taste were taken from a famed malted milk drink (milkshake) of the day – not the Earth’s galaxy, as many contend.[1][2] On March 10, 1925, the Milky Way trademark was registered in the U.S., claiming a first-use date of 1922.[3] In 1924, the Milky Way bar was introduced nationally and sold USD800,000 that year. The chocolate for the chocolate coating was supplied by Hershey's.[4] In 1935 the slogan was "The sweet you can eat between meals In 2010, the Milky Way Simply Caramel bar went on sale. In 2012, Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis went on sale as a limited time offering for the Halloween season. The American Milky Way bar contains 260 Calories in each 58 gram bar, while the smaller Milky Way Midnight contains 220 Calories in each 50 gram bar and the Milky Way Simply Caramel bar contains 250 calories in each 54 gram bar.[9] List of chocolate bar brands
Black hole A black hole is defined as a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping.[1] The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole.[2] Around a black hole, there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return. The hole is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[3][4] Quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature is inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole, making it difficult to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass or greater. Objects whose gravity fields are too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace. History General relativity