The world we live in is such a beautiful and fascinating place. There are towns that I never thought existed and they are absolutely stunning. But what about the sky we look into every night? How much about space do you actually know? Here are 17 incredibly amazing space facts that you probably never knew existed.
1. The International Space Station is the size of a football field. And weighs 925,000 pounds!
2. The Hubble Space Telescope observed a tiny patch of sky for 12 days and found over 10,000 galaxies. That patch is also just 1/10 the diameter of the moon.
3. The Hubble has traveled more than 3 billion miles in its orbit around Earth.
4. The sun rises in the west and sets on the east of Venus.
5. Snoopy, the Peanuts character, is NASA astronaut’s safety mascot.
6. Other planets have rings too, but Saturn’s are the only ones visible from Earth.
7. And more about Saturn, the rings aren’t solid. They are made of ice and rock.
8. Bennu, the hazardous asteroid that NASA plans to land on and take a sample from, was named by a 9 year old student.
9. There is a 3.3 inch aluminum sculpture on the moon for fallen astronauts.
10. A day on Venus is longer than its year.
11. If you cry in space, the tears just stick to your face.
12. The dark plains on the moon are named Maria, which is Latin for “seas”.
13. A mineral found on the moon was named armalcolite for the Apollo 11 crew. It is taken from ARMstrong, ALdrin and COLins.
14. Despite what Pink Floyd says, there is no permanent dark side of the moon. What they are referring to is ever-changing.
15. Jupiter has more than 50 moons. The biggest, Ganymede, is bigger than Mercury or Pluto.
16. Dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate.
17. Our sun is just one of at least 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Now, be honest, how many of these did you truly know? I learned a lot with most of these to be honest. It makes the world we live in seem very small compared to everything that is in just our galaxy.