Interesting Facts about Earth: Space

1. Earth is a fast-moving spacecraft. We’re living in a big, fast-moving (really fast!) spacecraft. Even when you’re resting on your armchair, you’re flying through space faster than the fastest human-made object ever built: around 1.3 million miles per hour (2.1 million km/hr).

2. The first photo of Earth from space has been taken on 1946. Long before the Soviet-made Sputnik truly began the space age in 1957, on October 24, 1946, the first photo of Earth from space has been taken. The scientists launched a Nazi-built V-2 rocket (No. 13) from the White Sands Missile Range, a United States Army rocket range in southern New Mexico. There was a camera aboard the rocket, and when the rocket reached 105 km (65 mi), the black-and-white photo was taken. The rocket was one of the V-2 rockets captured and moved to the US at the end of WWII.

3. The farthest photo of Earth. The farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1, took a photo of planet Earth in 1990, from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40 AU) from Earth. The photo is known as the Pale Blue Dot. In the photograph below, Earth is shown as a fraction of a pixel (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space.

4. Earth is the densest planet in our Solar System. If you’re looking for the densest planet in our solar system, you don’t have to look far: Earth is the densest planet in our Solar System. It has a density of 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter. This is only the average density of the planet. The core is much denser than the oceans for example.

5. Earth’s rotation on its Axis doesn’t take 24 hours. It actually takes approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds. This rotation is in respect to the distant “fixed” stars, and is called “sidereal day“. A sidereal day is the length of time it takes a planet to rotate from the perspective of a distant star.

6. Earth is not a perfect sphere. Because of its rotation, the shape of Earth is an oblate spheroid, a sphere that is slightly squashed at its poles and slightly swollen at the equator. Despite it is not a perfect sphere, the Earth still definitely does not look like this.

7. ISS is the Most Expensive Object Ever Constructed. The International Space Station (ISS) is the most expensive object ever constructed. In 2010 the cost was expected to be $150 billion.

8. You wouldn’t explode in space without a spacesuit. It is a common myth that your body would explode in space if you don’t wear a spacesuit. Human skin is strong enough to keep the body from bursting. In fact, you can live up to two minutes in the space unprotected. But, eventually, of course, you’d die.Also, you won’t freeze immediately in space, as in the Hollywood movies, despite its average temperature being so low (3 K, or -270 °C, -454 °F). Because there’s no matter in the space, so the heat does not leave the body quickly enough. You only lose heat via thermal radiation, of course, you will get colder and eventually freeze but very, very slowly.

9. Tardigrades can live 10 days in a vacuum. Speaking of surviving in the vacuum, Tardigrades, also known as water bears, can live 10 days in the vacuum, which makes them the hardest animal in existence. Two species of dried-up tardigrades were sent to space in 2007, and ten days later, they’ve been brought back, alive. They can also survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms. They can withstand temperature ranges from 1 K (-458 °F; -272 °C) (close to absolute zero) to about 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C), pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.

10. The Great Wall is NOT the only human-made object visible from the space. The Great Wall of China is frequently billed as the only human-made object visible from space, but, in fact, it is a common misconception about Earth. Most times, it isn’t visible from the space. In fact, according to NASA, it is very difficult to see or photograph the Great Wall from even the low Earth orbit. It very rarely can be visible, and to an aided eye, under special conditions. But, you can see a lot of things people have made, and perhaps most visible from low Earth orbit are cities at night. Cities can be seen during the day too, as can major roadways and bridges, airports, dams, and reservoirs.