97 Fun Facts About Space

What is the largest planet in our solar system?

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, with a mass more than twice that of all other planets combined. Its diameter is about 86,881 miles (139,822 km).

How long does sunlight take to cross the roughly 93 million miles from the Sun to Earth?

About 8 minutes and 20 seconds: light travels at about 186,000 miles per second across the roughly 93 million miles between Sun and Earth.

Which mission first carried humans to the Moon, orbiting ten times without landing and photographing Earthrise on Christmas Eve 1968?

Apollo 8's Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first people to see the far side of the Moon and took the famous Earthrise photograph on Christmas Eve 1968.

Who was the first human to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, as Apollo 11 commander, saying 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'

What is the name of NASA's most famous space telescope, launched in 1990?

Hubble launched on 24 April 1990 into low Earth orbit, where it circles at about 540 km altitude. It has delivered some of the most detailed visible-light images of distant galaxies and nebulae ever captured.

What is a black hole?

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so extremely strong that nothing, not even light or other electromagnetic radiation, can escape once past the event horizon.

Which planet's position was calculated mathematically before anyone had observed it through a telescope?

Neptune: Le Verrier and Adams independently predicted its position from irregularities in Uranus's orbit, and Galle found it on 23 September 1846 within a degree of the predicted spot.

What is the International Space Station (ISS)?

The ISS is a modular space station in low Earth orbit, serving as a microgravity research laboratory. It's a joint project among NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA, and has been continuously occupied since November 2000.

What is the closest star to Earth after the Sun?

Proxima Centauri is the closest known star to the Sun at approximately 4.24 light-years away. It is a small red dwarf star in the Alpha Centauri star system.

What galaxy do we live in?

Earth is located in the Milky Way galaxy, a barred spiral galaxy approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter containing an estimated 100-400 billion stars.

Which NASA rover landed on Mars in February 2021?

NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater. It carries the Ingenuity helicopter and is searching for signs of ancient microbial life.

What is the Great Red Spot?

The Great Red Spot is a giant anticyclonic storm in Jupiter's atmosphere, continuously observed since 1878 and measured at about 16,000 km wide by Juno in 2017, wider than Earth.

What does NASA stand for?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the name; it was established in 1958 under President Eisenhower as the agency responsible for the civilian space programme.

Which planet is famous for its prominent ring system?

While all four gas giants have ring systems, Saturn's rings are by far the most prominent and visible, composed primarily of ice particles, rocky debris, and dust.

What was the first animal sent into orbit around Earth?

Laika, a Soviet space dog, became the first animal to orbit Earth aboard Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. Sadly, she did not survive the mission, but her flight proved that living passengers could survive launch and weightlessness.

What is the Kuiper Belt?

The Kuiper Belt is a region of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit, roughly 30 to 55 AU from the Sun; it holds Pluto, Haumea and Makemake and supplies many short-period comets.

Who founded SpaceX?

SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars.

Where does Earth's atmosphere officially end and space begin?

The Kármán Line, at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level, is the internationally recognized boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.

How many planets are in our solar system?

There are 8 recognized planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet by the IAU in 2006.

What was the first artificial satellite launched into Earth's orbit?

Sputnik 1, a 58-centimetre polished metal sphere, was launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 and orbited Earth for three months.

What phenomenon causes a star to explode at the end of its life?

A supernova is the explosive death of a massive star, occurring when the star's core collapses. It can briefly outshine an entire galaxy and radiate more energy than our Sun will in its entire lifetime.

Which crewed lunar mission suffered an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon?

Apollo 13 experienced an oxygen tank explosion on April 13, 1970, forcing the crew to abandon the lunar landing and use the Lunar Module as a lifeboat for the harrowing return to Earth.

What is the estimated age of the universe?

The universe is estimated to be approximately 13.8 billion years old, based on observations of cosmic microwave background radiation and measurements from the Planck satellite and other instruments.

What type of star is our Sun?

Our Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V), commonly called a yellow dwarf. It is a medium-sized star about 4.6 billion years old, roughly halfway through its main-sequence life.

Which planet rotates on its side with an axial tilt of about 98 degrees?

Uranus has an extreme axial tilt of about 98 degrees, meaning it essentially rotates on its side. This is thought to be the result of a collision with an Earth-sized body long ago.

What is the brightest star in the night sky as seen from Earth?

Sirius, also known as the Dog Star, is the brightest star in the night sky with an apparent visual magnitude of -1.46. It is located in the constellation Canis Major, about 8.6 light-years from Earth.

What is the name of the first space shuttle to fly in space?

Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space-rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet, making its first orbital flight (STS-1) on April 12, 1981. Enterprise was a test vehicle that never flew in space.

What is the invisible substance thought to make up about 85% of the universe's mass?

Dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light and is inferred only from its gravity, such as the way galaxies spin faster than their visible mass allows.

Which Galilean moon's smooth, crack-streaked ice shell is thought to cover a saltwater ocean?

Europa is believed to have a vast saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust, making it one of the most promising places in our solar system to search for extraterrestrial life.

What is a light-year a measure of?

A light-year is a unit of distance, not time. It represents the distance that light travels in one year in a vacuum, approximately 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers).

Which moon is the only known world besides Earth with stable lakes and seas on its surface?

Its lakes are filled with liquid methane and ethane, not water, under a nitrogen atmosphere thicker than Earth's.

What is the Oort Cloud?

The Oort Cloud is a theoretical spherical cloud of predominantly icy objects believed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 100,000 AU. It is thought to be the source of long-period comets.

Who was the first woman in space?

Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6. She orbited Earth 48 times over nearly three days.

What causes a solar eclipse?

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, casting a shadow on Earth's surface. The Moon can appear to fully or partially block the Sun depending on the alignment.

Which rocket lands its first stage after launch so it can be flown again?

Falcon 9 is SpaceX's partially reusable two-stage booster; its first stage flies back to a landing, which is what has driven launch costs down.

What is the hottest planet in our solar system?

Venus's surface reaches about 464 °C (867 °F): though farther from the Sun than Mercury, its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere creates an extreme greenhouse effect.

What are the Van Allen radiation belts?

The Van Allen radiation belts are zones of energetic charged particles, mostly from the solar wind, captured by and held around Earth by its magnetic field. There are two main belts extending from about 640 to 58,000 km above the surface.

Which spacecraft was the first to fly by Pluto?

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft performed the first flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, passing within 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet and sending back detailed images and data.

What is the largest moon in our solar system?

Ganymede is 3,273 miles (5,268 km) across, larger than the planet Mercury, and is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field.

What did the two Voyager probes carry as a message for any extraterrestrials who might find them?

The Voyager Golden Record is a gold-plated copper disc included aboard both Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, containing sounds, images, and music representing life and culture on Earth, intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life that might find them.

What is the cosmic microwave background (CMB)?

The cosmic microwave background is faint electromagnetic radiation filling all of space, representing the afterglow of the Big Bang from approximately 380,000 years after the universe began.

Who was the first human to travel into space?

Gagarin completed a single orbit aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961; the flight lasted 108 minutes and he parachuted separately from the capsule on descent.

Which rover, the first ever on Martian soil, landed with Mars Pathfinder?

Sojourner rode down with Mars Pathfinder on July 4, 1997, becoming the first rover to operate on Mars; the six-wheeled, microwave-oven-sized robot worked for 83 sols instead of its planned seven.

Approximately how far is the Moon from Earth?

The Moon is approximately 238,900 miles (384,400 kilometers) from Earth on average. This distance varies slightly due to the Moon's elliptical orbit.

What is the James Webb Space Telescope primarily designed to observe?

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021, is primarily an infrared telescope designed to observe the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, study the formation of stars and planets, and examine exoplanet atmospheres.

What is the asteroid belt?

The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It contains millions of asteroids, ranging from tiny rocks to the dwarf planet Ceres.

Who was the first American to orbit Earth?

John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962, aboard Friendship 7 during the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. He orbited Earth three times in a flight lasting nearly 5 hours.

What object is left behind when a supernova's collapsing core is not heavy enough to become a black hole?

A neutron star packs roughly 1.4 times the Sun's mass into a sphere only about 12 miles across; a teaspoon of it would outweigh hundreds of Great Pyramids.

What is the Chandrasekhar limit?

The Chandrasekhar limit is approximately 1.4 solar masses and represents the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. Above this limit, electron degeneracy pressure cannot support the star and it collapses further into a neutron star or black hole.

Which space mission first landed humans on the Moon?

Apollo 11's lunar module Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969; its two moonwalkers collected 21.5 kg of lunar material while a third crewman orbited above.

What is the smallest planet in the solar system?

Mercury's radius is under 2,440 km, making it smaller than the moons Ganymede and Titan, though it is more massive than either.

Which country operates the Tiangong space station?

China's Tiangong, meaning 'Heavenly Palace', began with the Tianhe core module launched in April 2021 and has hosted rotating three-person crews sent by the China Manned Space Agency.

Who was the second person to walk on the Moon?

Buzz Aldrin followed Armstrong down Eagle's ladder on July 20, 1969, stepping onto the Moon about 19 minutes later and describing the view as 'magnificent desolation'.

Which element makes up roughly three-quarters of the Sun's mass?

Hydrogen is about 73% of the Sun's photosphere; every second the core fuses about 600 billion kilograms of it into helium, converting four billion kilograms of matter into energy.

What is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way?

Andromeda is about 2.5 million light-years away and visible to the naked eye; a Persian astronomer described it as a "small cloud" around 964 CE.

Who became the first American woman in space, in 1983?

Sally Ride flew on Challenger's STS-7 in June 1983, aged 32, becoming the first American woman in space and only the third woman overall after Soviet cosmonauts Tereshkova and Savitskaya.

Which Martian volcano rises about 2.5 times the height of Everest?

At roughly 21 km high, Olympus Mons is so broad and gently sloped that someone standing on its flank would not see it as a mountain.

The red supergiant Betelgeuse is in which constellation?

Betelgeuse marks the eastern shoulder of Orion the Hunter; its dramatic dimming in 2019-20 fuelled speculation that it was about to go supernova.

The reddish dust covering Mars's plains is rich in what?

Airborne iron oxide particles can even tint the Martian sky pink, while dust in the air usually gives it a tawny colour.

Which country made the first soft landing near the Moon's south pole in August 2023?

India's Chandrayaan-3 lander Vikram touched down at about 69 degrees south on August 23, 2023, four years after Chandrayaan-2's lander crashed attempting the same feat.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome, launch site of Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1, is in which country?

Baikonur lies in Kazakhstan, which has leased the cosmodrome to Russia since 1994; the pad used for Sputnik 1 and Gagarin's Vostok 1 is known as 'Gagarin's Start'.

Ingenuity, which made the first powered flight on another planet, was what kind of vehicle?

Ingenuity, a 1.8 kg helicopter carried to Mars by the Perseverance rover, was meant to make five test flights in the thin air; it flew 72 times between April 2021 and January 2024.

The 1908 Tunguska airburst, which flattened some 2,000 square kilometres of forest, occurred in which country?

Russia: the Tunguska blast over Siberia, estimated at 3 to 50 megatons, flattened around 80 million trees, yet no impact crater has ever been found.

Ham, launched on a suborbital flight in January 1961, was what kind of animal?

Ham the chimpanzee flew on Mercury-Redstone 2 on January 31, 1961, months before Alan Shepard, then retired to zoos in Washington and North Carolina, living until 1983.

What was the name of the first US space station, launched in 1973?

Skylab, launched on May 14, 1973, housed three crews for a combined 24 weeks; its orbital workshop, built from a Saturn V third stage, was larger than any single ISS module.

Which Jovian moon, with 400+ volcanoes, is the most geologically active body known?

Io is squeezed by the tug-of-war between Jupiter and its neighbouring moons; its plumes rise as high as 500 km.

Which asteroid-belt body, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on 1 January 1801, was the first asteroid found?

Ceres, spotted by Piazzi from Palermo on 1 January 1801, is the largest object in the asteroid belt at about 940 km across and was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.

Roughly how long is a day on Jupiter?

Jupiter rotates once in just under 10 hours, the fastest spin of any planet, which flattens it into an oblate spheroid with an equator about 7% wider than its poles.

Which astronaut hit two golf balls on the Moon during Apollo 14?

Alan Shepard, the first American in space, was 47 on Apollo 14 in February 1971 and hit two balls with a six-iron head clipped to a sample-collecting handle.

The 1986 Challenger disaster was traced to the failure of which component?

O-ring seals: record cold on launch morning stiffened the rubber O-rings in the right solid rocket booster's aft joint, letting hot gas burn through to the external fuel tank.

Who discovered Pluto in 1930?

Tombaugh was a 24-year-old farm boy hired by Lowell Observatory; he only earned his bachelor's degree six years after the discovery.

The giant Arecibo radio telescope, which collapsed in 2020, was located where?

Arecibo's 305-metre dish, built into a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico and completed in 1963, was the world's largest single-aperture telescope until China's FAST opened in 2016.

Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest star in which constellation?

Ursa Minor's brightest star is Polaris, a yellow supergiant less than one degree from the north celestial pole, which is why it barely seems to move while the sky wheels around it.

Which supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's centre had its accretion disk imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2022?

Sagittarius A*, abbreviated Sgr A*, is the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre; the Event Horizon Telescope released the first image of its glowing accretion disk in May 2022.

What shape is the persistent cloud pattern around Saturn's north pole?

The hexagon is a six-sided jet stream circling Saturn's north pole at about 78 degrees latitude, first seen in Voyager images from 1980-81 and imaged in detail by Cassini.

Who performed the first spacewalk, in March 1965?

Leonov's suit ballooned so much outside Voskhod 2 that he had to bleed off air to squeeze back through the airlock.

Which spacecraft became the first to enter interstellar space, in 2012?

Voyager 1, launched in September 1977, crossed the heliopause on 25 August 2012, becoming the first spacecraft in interstellar space and the most distant human-made object.

Who became the first African-American woman in space, aboard Endeavour in 1992?

A physician and engineer, Jemison had served in the Peace Corps and was chosen from about 2,000 applicants for the first class after Challenger.

Which comet broke apart and slammed into Jupiter in July 1994?

Shoemaker–Levy 9's fragments struck Jupiter at about 60 km/s between 16 and 22 July 1994, leaving dark scars that were more visible than the Great Red Spot for months.

Cassini found water plumes venting from the south pole of which moon?

Enceladus's south-polar 'tiger stripe' fractures vent more than 100 geysers, spraying about 200 kg of water ice and vapour per second; most of it ends up forming Saturn's E ring.

Which ESA lander bounced twice before making the first soft landing on a comet, in 2014?

Philae's harpoons failed to fire, so it bounced twice across comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014 and came to rest in shadow, transmitting for about 60 hours before its batteries died.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx returned a sample from which asteroid in 2023?

The capsule carrying about 122 grams of Bennu's rubble parachuted into the Utah desert on 24 September 2023, and the spacecraft flew on, renamed OSIRIS-APEX, to study the asteroid Apophis.

The first-ever black hole image (2019) showed the one at the centre of which galaxy?

Messier 87's central black hole, 55 million light-years away in Virgo, was resolved as a ring of light by the Event Horizon Telescope, which stitched together radio dishes across the globe.

Which dwarf planet, discovered in 2005, is the most massive one known?

Eris outweighs Pluto by about 27% despite being slightly smaller, and its discovery forced astronomers to define what a planet is.

What was 'Oumuamua, spotted by a Hawaiian telescope in October 2017?

'Oumuamua was the first confirmed interstellar object, already racing away from the Sun when Pan-STARRS found it on 19 October 2017; its elongated shape and hyperbolic path earned the new designation 1I.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered what type of object in 1967?

Bell Burnell spotted the first pulsar, PSR B1919+21, in Cambridge radio-telescope data in 1967; the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics went to her supervisor Antony Hewish rather than to her.

Who launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket, in 1926?

Goddard's team went on to launch 34 rockets by 1941, reaching altitudes of 2.6 km, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is named for him.

Which is the only large moon in the solar system to orbit its planet backwards?

Triton's retrograde path suggests it was a Kuiper Belt dwarf planet captured by Neptune rather than a moon that formed in place.

Which spacecraft became the fastest human-made object, topping 690,000 km/h near the Sun in 2024?

Parker Solar Probe used seven Venus gravity assists to bring its perihelion within about 6.9 million km of the Sun's centre, reaching roughly 692,000 km/h on its 24 December 2024 pass through the corona.

What was the first modular space station, assembled in orbit from 1986?

Mir stayed up for 15 years and held the record for continuous human presence until the ISS overtook it in 2010.

Which ESA probe parachuted onto Titan in 2005, the first landing on an outer-planet moon?

Huygens rode piggyback on Cassini for seven years, then parachuted for two and a half hours through Titan's orange haze.

Who discovered the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, in 1877?

Hall named them after the twin sons of Ares, the Greek gods of fear and panic.

Which NASA spacecraft orbited the dwarf planet Ceres from 2015?

Dawn found Ceres to be the closest known cryovolcanically active body to the Sun, with salty brines still seeping up to the surface.

Which Soviet probe made the first successful soft landing on another planet, in 1970?

Venera 7 survived on Venus's surface for about 23 minutes on 15 December 1970, long enough to send back the first data transmitted from another planet's surface.

Which Soviet probe in 1959 became the first human-made object to reach the Moon?

Luna 2 struck the Moon near Mare Imbrium on 13 September 1959 at about 3.3 km/s; on the way it released a sodium vapour cloud so observatories could track it.

What was the first module of the International Space Station, launched in 1998?

Zarya, meaning 'sunrise', was launched on 20 November 1998 on a Proton rocket; built in Russia but funded by the United States, it later served mainly as storage and propulsion.

Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system, is named after what?

Valles Marineris takes its name from Mariner 9, the orbiter that mapped it in 1971-72; the canyon system runs more than 4,000 km, about the width of the United States, and plunges up to 7 km deep.