Interesting Facts About Outer Space

The solar system is a bizarre place with its alien planets, mysterious moons and strange phenomena that are so out-of-this-world they elude explanation. Scientists have discovered ice-spewing volcanoes on Pluto, while Mars is home to a truly "grand" canyon the size of the United States. There may even be a giant, undiscovered planet lurking somewhere beyond Neptune. Now here are some listed facts that you may or may not know about space

• In space the skin on your feet peels off!
  This is a pretty gross fact but in the micro-gravity environment, astronauts are not using their feet to walk. Therefore the skin on their feet starts to soften and flakes off. As laundry facilities do not exist in space, astronauts will wear the same underwear and socks for a few days. Those socks then need to be taken off very gently. If not those dead skin cells will float around in the weightless environment.

• On Venus a day is longer than a year.
  This is tricky one to get your head around but a year on Venus (that is the length of time it takes to complete one whole orbit around the Sun) is 224.7 Earth days. However it takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis just once.

• The astronauts were placed in quarantine after returning from the moon.
  There is a famous image of President Nixon talking to the Apollo 11 crew consisting of Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This continued until after the Apollo 14 crew returned safely. After this it was decided that the Moon did not contain any deadly diseases. The Apollo 13 crew, who had a malfunction and had to return to Earth, did not have to be quarantined after their re-entry as they didn’t actually walk on the moon.

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• Space is not that far away.
  Space officially begins at the universal marker of the Karman Line. This invisible boundary is 100km above the Earth. In theory if you could drive your car upwards, you could be in space in less than hour

• The hottest planet is not the closest planet to the Sun.
  Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, it is not actually the hottest. Mercury does not have any atmosphere meaning that this planet is only hot in the daytime when it is directly facing the Sun. At this stage temperatures can rise to 425°C but at night the planet’s temperature can drop down to a freezing -180°C. Venus is the hottest planet. Its thick clouds trap the Sun’s heat causing Venus to be a sizzling 500°C all of the time!

• The North Star will change…eventually
  The North Star used for navigation, a steady point in the night sky will change, however not in our lifetime. The Earth is rotating like a spinning top and therefore the pole of our planet wobbles. Currently it points to Polaris but in the year 13727 our Pole Star will be the star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra. Vega was the also North Star in 12000BCE.

• The Apollo crews did not have any life insurance.
  On the chance that the 3 man crew of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins did not return safely from the moon, they were not covered by any life insurance policy. So before their trip all 3 men signed photographs that could be sold in the event of their death. These Insurance covers were also stamped and posted on the start date of the mission, July 16th 1969 by a friend.

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