Amazing Facts about Space

1. Space is completely silent.

As there is no atmosphere in the space, sound cannot travel en space as there is no medium for sound to travel. Astronauts use radio communication in space, since radio waves are electromagnetic waves they do not need any medium to travel in space.

2. The hottest planet in our solar system is 450° C.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system and has an average temperature of surface is around 450° C. Interestingly, Venus is not closest planet to the Sun – Mercury is closer but because Mercury do not have atmosphere to regulate it’s temperature it has a very large temperature fluctuations.

3. There may be life on Mars.

All the planets in our solar system (except Earth), Mars is the one most likely to be habitable for life. In 1986, NASA found what they thought, fossils of microscopic living things in a rock recovered from Mars.

4. Nobody knows how many stars are in space.

The size of space makes it impossible to accurately tell how many stars we have. Right now, scientists and astronomers use the number of stars only within our galaxy, The Milky Way, to estimate. That number is between 200-400 billion stars and there are estimated to be billions of galaxies so the stars in space really are completely uncountable.

5. Halley’s Comet won’t orbit past Earth again until 2061.

Discovered in 1705 by Edmond Halley, the famous comet was last seen in 1986 and is only seen once every 75 to 76 years.

6. A full NASA space suit costs $12,000,000.

While the entire suit costs a $12m, 70% of that cost is for the backpack and control module.

7. Neutron stars can spin 600 times per second.

Neutron stars are the densest and the tiniest stars in the known universe and although they only have a radius of about 10 km (6 mi), they may have a mass of a few times that of the Sun. They can rotate at up to 600 times per second after they are born from a core-collapse supernova star explosion and have been known to spin as fast as 600-712 times per second because of their physics.

8. There may be a planet made out of diamonds.

As facts go, this is pretty impressive. Research by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet called 55 Cancri e — which has a radius twice Earth’s, and a mass eight times greater – may have a surface made up of graphite and diamond. It’s 40 light years away but visible to naked eye in the constellation of Cancer.

9. The footprints on the Moon will be there for 100 million years.

As the Moon has no atmosphere, which means there is no wind on the moon to erode the surface and no water to wash the footprints away. This means the footprints  of the Apollo astronauts, along with spacecraft prints, rover-prints and discarded material, will be there for millions of years.

 10. One day on Venus is longer than one year.

Venus has a slow axis rotation which takes 243 Earth days to complete its day and the orbit of Venus around the Sun is 225 Earth days, making a year on Venus 18 days less than a day on Venus.