Portal:Outer space
Introduction
Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, neutrinos, dust, and cosmic rays. The baseline temperature of outer space, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7255 kelvins (−270.4245 °C; −454.7641 °F) +/-0.002 K. The plasma between galaxies is thought to account for about half of the baryonic (ordinary) matter in the universe, having a number density of less than one hydrogen atom per cubic metre and a temperature of millions of kelvins. Local concentrations of matter have condensed into stars and galaxies. Studies indicate that 90% of the mass in most galaxies is in an unknown form, called dark matter, which interacts with other matter through gravitational but not electromagnetic forces. Observations suggest that the majority of the mass-energy in the observable universe is dark energy, a type of vacuum energy that is poorly understood. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the universe, but even galaxies and star systems consist almost entirely of empty space.
Outer space does not begin at a definite altitude above the Earth's surface. The Kármán line, an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above sea level, is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping. The framework for international space law was established by the Outer Space Treaty, which entered into force on 10 October 1967. This treaty precludes any claims of national sovereignty and permits all states to freely explore outer space. Despite the drafting of UN resolutions for the peaceful uses of outer space, anti-satellite weapons have been tested in Earth orbit.
Humans began the physical exploration of space during the 20th century with the advent of high-altitude balloon flights. This was followed by crewed rocket flights and, then, crewed Earth orbit, first achieved by Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union in 1961. Due to the high cost of getting into space, human spaceflight has been limited to low Earth orbit and the Moon. On the other hand, uncrewed spacecraft have reached all of the known planets in the Solar System.
Outer space represents a challenging environment for human exploration because of the hazards of vacuum and radiation. Microgravity also has a negative effect on human physiology that causes both muscle atrophy and bone loss. In addition to these health and environmental issues, the economic cost of putting objects, including humans, into space is very high. (Full article...)
Selected article
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun; it is the third largest and fourth most massive planet in the Solar System. Uranus was the first planet discovered in modern times. Though it is visible to the naked eye like the five classical planets, it was never recognised as a planet by ancient observers due to its dimness. Sir William Herschel announced its discovery on March 13, 1781, expanding the known boundaries of the solar system. Uranus' atmosphere, although similar to Jupiter and Saturn in being composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, contains a higher proportion of "ices" such as water, ammonia and methane, along with the usual traces of hydrocarbons. It has the coldest planetary atmosphere in the solar system, with a minimum temperature of 49 K, and has a complex layered cloud structure in which water is thought to make up the lowest clouds, while methane makes up the uppermost layer of clouds. In 1986, images from the Voyager 2 space probe showed Uranus as a virtually featureless planet in visible light without the cloud bands or storms associated with the other giants. The wind speeds on Uranus can reach 250 m/s (560 mph).
Selected picture
Image cr: Dave JarvisAn illustration of relative astronomical orders of magnitude, starting with the terrestrial planets of the Solar System in image 1 (top left) and ending with the largest known star, VY Canis Majoris, at the bottom right. The biggest celestial body in each image is shown on the left of the next frame.
An animated view of Voyager I's approach to Jupiter. One frame of this image was taken each Jupiter day (approximately 10 hours) between January 6 and February 9, 1979, as the space probe flew from 58 million to 31 million kilometers from Jupiter during that time. The small, round, dark spots appearing in some frames are the shadows cast by the moons passing between Jupiter and the Sun, while the small, white flashes around the planet, are the moons themselves.
Photo: Adam EvansThe Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years away. The image, created using a hydrogen-alpha filter, also shows Messier objects 32 and 110, as well as NGC 206 and the star Nu Andromedae. On December 15, 1612, German astronomer Simon Marius became the first person to describe the galaxy using a telescope.
NGC 6357 is a diffuse nebula in the constellation Scorpius. This composite image of the nebula contains X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from the SuperCosmos Sky Survey (blue). Radiation from hot, young stars is energizing the cooler gas in the clouds that surround them. Often known as the Lobster Nebula, the astronomical object has also been termed the Madokami Nebula by fans of the anime Madoka Magica due to its supposed resemblance to the main character. Scientists at the Midcourse Space Experiment prefer the name War and Peace Nebula, because the bright, western part resembles a dove, while the eastern part looks like a skull in infrared images.
"The Blue Marble" is a famous photograph of Earth. NASA officially crs the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew — Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt — all of whom took photographic images during the mission. Apollo 17 passed over Africa during daylight hours and Antarctica is also illuminated. The photograph was taken approximately five hours after the spacecraft's launch, while en route to the Moon. Apollo 17, notably, was the last manned lunar mission; no humans since have been at a range where taking a "whole-Earth" photograph such as "The Blue Marble" would be possible.
Photograph: Ken CrawfordNGC 4565 (also known as the Needle Galaxy) is an edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 to 50 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. NGC 4565 is a giant spiral galaxy more luminous than the Andromeda Galaxy, and has a population of roughly 240 globular clusters, more than the Milky Way.
Photo cr: New Horizons probeAn animation of an eruption by the Tvashtar Paterae volcanic region on the innermost of Jupiter's Galilean moons, Io. The ejecta plume is 330 km (205 mi) high, though only its uppermost half is visible in this image, as its source lies over the moon's limb on its far side. This animation consists of a sequence of five images taken by NASA's New Horizons probe on March 1, 2007, over the course of eight minutes from 23:50 UTC.- Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, is named after the Roman god of war because of its blood red color. Mars has two small, oddly-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos, named after the sons of the Greek god Ares. At some point in the future Phobos will be broken up by gravitational forces. The atmosphere on Mars is 95% carbon dioxide. In 2003 methane was also discovered in the atmosphere. Since methane is an unstable gas, this indicates that there must be (or have been within the last few hundred years) a source of the gas on the planet.
- "Earthrise," the first occasion in which humans saw the Earth seemingly rising above the surface of the Moon, taken during the Apollo 8 mission on December 24, 1968. This view was seen by the crew at the beginning of its fourth orbit around the Moon, although the very first photograph taken was in black-and-white. Note that the Earth is in shadow here. A photo of a fully lit Earth would not be taken until the Apollo 17 mission.
The Pillars of Creation, a series of elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, are the subject of a famous Hubble Space Telescope photograph taken in 1995. They are so named because the depicted gas and dust, while being eroded by the light from nearby stars, are in the process of creating new stars. Shown here is a 2014 rephotograph, which was unveiled in 2015 as part of the telescope's 25th anniversary celebrations.- A composite photo of the Orion Nebula, the closest region of star formation to Earth. It is composed of 520 separate images and NASA calls it "one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced". The nebula is located below Orion's Belt and is visible to the naked eye at night. It is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky, and is among the most intensely-studied celestial features.
- The Sombrero Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the Virgo constellation. It was discovered in the late 1700s. It is about 28 million light years away and is just faint enough to be invisible to the naked eye but easily visible with small telescopes. In our sky, it is about one-fifth the diameter of the full moon. M104 is moving away from Earth at about 1,000 kilometers per second.
Photo cr: Harrison SchmittAstronaut Eugene Cernan makes a short test drive of the lunar rover (officially, Lunar Roving Vehicle or LRV) during the early part of the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity. The LRV was only used in the last three Apollo missions, but it performed without any major problems and allowed the astronauts to cover far more ground than in previous missions. All three LRVs were abandoned on the Moon.
Photo cr: Spirit roverA 360° panorama taken during the descent from the summit of Husband Hill, one of the Columbia Hills in Gusev crater, Mars. This stitched image is composed of 405 individual images taken with five different filters on the panoramic camera over the course of five Martian days.- The Pioneer plaque, which was included on both Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 unmanned spacecraft, the first man-made objects to leave the Solar System. Made from gold-anodised aluminium, the plaque shows the figures of a man and a woman along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. However, the mean time for the spacecraft to come within 30 astronomical units of a star is longer than the current age of our galaxy.
Photo: Yuri Beletsky, ESOA laser shoots towards the centre of the Milky Way from the Very Large Telescope facility in Chile, to provide a laser guide star, a reference point in the sky for the telescope's adaptive optics (AO) system. AO technology improves the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of atmospheric distortion. AO was first envisioned by Horace W. Babcock in 1953, but did not come into common usage until advances in computer technology during the 1990s made the technique practical.
Animation cr: CmgleeThis is an animation showing geocentric satellite orbits, to scale with the Earth, at 3,600 times actual speed. The second-outermost (shown in grey) is a geostationary orbit, 35,786 kilometres (22,236 miles) above Earth's equator and following the direction of Earth's rotation, with an orbital period matching the planet's rotation period (a geosynchronous orbit). An object in such an orbit will appear to occupy a fixed position in the sky. Some 300 kilometres (190 miles) farther away is the graveyard orbit (brown), used for satellites at the end of their operational lives. Nearer to the Earth are the orbits of navigational satellites, such as Galileo (turquoise), BeiDou (beige), GPS (blue) and GLONASS (red), in medium Earth orbits. Much closer to the planet, and within the inner Van Allen belt, are satellites in low Earth orbit, such as the Iridium satellite constellation (purple), the Hubble Space Telescope (green) and the International Space Station (magenta).- This Supernova remnant of Kepler's Supernova (SN 1604) is made up of the materials left behind by the gigantic explosion of a star. There are two possible routes to this end: either a massive star may cease to generate fusion energy in its core, and collapse inward under the force of its own gravity, or a white dwarf star may accumulate material from a companion star until it reaches a critical mass and undergoes a similar collapse. In either case, the resulting supernova explosion expels much or all of the stellar material with great force.
Six beryllium mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) undergoing a series of cryogenic tests at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The JWST is a planned space telescope that is a joint collaboration of 20 countries. It will orbit the Sun approximately 1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) beyond the Earth, around the L2 Lagrange point. It is expected to launch in December 2021.
A timed exposure of the first Space Shuttle mission, STS-1. The shuttle Columbia stands on launch pad A at Kennedy Space Center, the night before launch. The objectives of the maiden flight were to check out the overall Shuttle system, accomplish a safe ascent into orbit and to return to Earth for a safe landing.
The Day the Earth Smiled refers to the date July 19, 2013, on which the Cassini spacecraft turned to image Saturn, its entire ring system, and the Earth from a position where Saturn eclipsed the Sun. Cassini imaging team leader and planetary scientist Carolyn Porco called for all the world's people to reflect on humanity's place in the cosmos, to marvel at life on Earth, and to look up and smile in celebration. The final mosaic, shown here, was released four months later and includes planets Earth, Mars, and Venus, and a host of Saturnian moons.
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Space news
- April 7: NASA's helicopter Ingenuity survives its first night at Mars
- December 25: 'Earth-based life can survive in hydrogen-rich atmospheres': MIT professor Dr Seager tells Wikinews about her research on organisms thriving in oxygen-less environment
- July 7: Astronomer Anthony Boccaletti discusses observation of birth of potential exoplanet with Wikinews
- May 31: SpaceX successfully launches its first crewed spaceflight
- May 22: Astronomer tells Wikinews about discovery of closest black hole known so far
- October 12: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov dies at age 85
- October 10: Swedish academy announces 2019 Nobel Prize winners in physics
- September 14: Astronomers find water vapour in atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b
- March 5: SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docks with International Space Station
- January 9: Simple animals could live in Martian brines: Wikinews interviews planetary scientist Vlada Stamenković
- November 29: NASA's InSight Lander makes it to Mars
- October 12: Manned Soyuz space mission aborts during launch
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Upcoming spaceflight launches
General images
A piece of a thermal blanket that may have come from the descent stage of the Perseverance (from Space debris)
Cosmic dust of the Horsehead Nebula as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. (from Cosmic dust)
2008 launch of the SM-3 missile used to destroy American reconnaissance satellite USA-193
Large scale matter distribution in a cubic section of the universe. The blue fiber structures represent the matter and the empty regions in between represent the cosmic voids of the intergalactic medium. (from Outer space)
Porous chondrite interplanetary dust particle. (from Cosmic dust)
Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51) (from Space exploration)
Comet 103P/Hartley (2010) (from Space exploration)
A MESSENGER image from 18,000 km showing a region about 500 km across (2008) (from Space exploration)
Perseverance's backshell sitting upright on the surface of Jezero Crater (from Space debris)
A picture of Saturn taken by Cassini (2004) (from Space exploration)
Buzz Aldrin and Apollo 11's lunar lander on the Moon's surface (from Space exploration)
Baker-Nunn cameras were widely used to study space debris. (from Space debris)
Apollo 16 LEM Orion, the Lunar Roving Vehicle and astronaut John Young (1972) (from Space exploration)
Surface of Mars by the Spirit rover (2004) (from Space exploration)
A proposed timeline of the origin of space, from physical cosmology (from Outline of space science)
Tupan Patera on Io(from Space exploration)
Delta-v's in km/s for various orbital maneuvers (from Space exploration)
Artistic image of a rocket lifting from a Saturn moon (from Space exploration)
Mars, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (2003) (from Space exploration)
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had a personal Communion service when he first arrived on the surface of the Moon. (from Space exploration)
Astronaut Piers Sellers during the third spacewalk of STS-121, a demonstration of orbiter heat shield repair techniques (from Outline of space science)
Herbig–Haro object HH 110 ejects gas through interstellar space. (from Interstellar medium)
This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar. (from Interstellar medium)
The diversity found in the different types and scales of astronomical objects make the field of study increasingly specialized. (from Outline of space science)
A laser-guided observation of the Milky Way Galaxy at the Paranal Observatory in Chile in 2010 (from Outline of space science)
Gabbard diagram of almost 300 pieces of debris from the disintegration of the five-month-old third stage of the Chinese Long March 4 booster on 11 March 2000 (from Space debris)
A micrometeoroid left this crater on the surface of Space Shuttle Challenger's front window on STS-7. (from Space debris)
Most orbital flight actually takes place in upper layers of the atmosphere, especially in the thermosphere (not to scale) (from Space exploration)
SpaceShipOne completed the first human private spaceflight in 2004, reaching an altitude of 100.12 km (62.21 mi).
Artist's impression of dust formation around a supernova explosion. (from Cosmic dust)
Saudi officials inspect a crashed PAM-D module in January 2001. (from Space debris)
Aurora australis observed from the Space Shuttle Discovery, on STS-39, May 1991 (orbital altitude: 260 km)
V-2 Rocket in the Peenemünde Museum (from Space exploration)
Space Shuttle Endeavour had a major impact on its radiator during STS-118. The entry hole is about 5.5 mm (0.22 in), and the exit hole is twice as large. (from Space debris)
Major elements of 200 stratospheric interplanetary dust particles. (from Cosmic dust)
First television image of Earth from space, taken by TIROS-1. (1960) (from Space exploration)
Crew quarters on Zvezda the base ISS crew module (from Space exploration)
Orbit of 2020 SO (from Space debris)
The distribution of ionized hydrogen (known by astronomers as H II from old spectroscopic terminology) in the parts of the Galactic interstellar medium visible from the Earth's northern hemisphere as observed with the Wisconsin Hα Mapper (Haffner et al. 2003). (from Interstellar medium)
The original Magdeburg hemispheres (lower left) used to demonstrate Otto von Guericke's vacuum pump (right)
The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) is an important source of information on small-particle space debris. (from Space debris)
Smooth chondrite interplanetary dust particle. (from Cosmic dust)
Cosmic dust of the Andromeda Galaxy as revealed in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope. (from Cosmic dust)
Spatial density of LEO space debris by altitude, according to 2011 a NASA report to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (from Space debris)
Asteroid 4 Vesta, imaged by the Dawn spacecraft (2011) (from Space exploration)
New Horizons image of Charon (2015) (from Space exploration)
The interface between the Earth's surface and outer space. The Kármán line at an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) is shown. The layers of the atmosphere are drawn to scale, whereas objects within them, such as the International Space Station, are not. (from Outer space)
The United States' planned Space Launch System concept art (from Space exploration)
Because of the hazards of a vacuum, astronauts must wear a pressurized space suit while off-Earth and outside their spacecraft.
Apollo CSM in lunar orbit (from Space exploration)
Triton as imaged by Voyager 2 (1989) (from Space exploration)
Phobos (moon) (2008) (from Space exploration)
Debris impacts on Mir's solar panels degraded their performance. The damage is most noticeable on the panel on the right, which is facing the camera with a high degree of contrast. Extensive damage to the smaller panel below is due to impact with a Progress spacecraft. (from Space debris)
Space Shuttle Discovery's lower starboard wing and Thermal Protection System tiles, photographed on STS-114 during an R-Bar Pitch Manoeuvre where astronauts examine the TPS for any damage during ascent (from Space debris)
Voyager 1 is the first artificial object to reach the interstellar medium. (from Interstellar medium)
Uranus as imaged by Voyager 2 (1986) (from Space exploration)
Atmospheric attenuation in dB/km as a function of frequency over the EHF band. Peaks in absorption at specific frequencies are a problem, due to atmosphere constituents such as water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). (from Interstellar medium)
Cislunar space seen from Mars (from Outer space)
Spent upper stage of a Delta II rocket, photographed by the XSS 10 satellite (from Space debris)
The Blue Marble Earth picture taken during Apollo 17 (1972) (from Space exploration)
Model of Vostok spacecraft (from Space exploration)
Map showing the Sun located near the edge of the Local Interstellar Cloud and Alpha Centauri about 4 light-years away in the neighboring G-Cloud complex (from Interstellar medium)
The sparse plasma (blue) and dust (white) in the tail of comet Hale–Bopp are being shaped by pressure from solar radiation and the solar wind, respectively
Objects in Earth orbit including fragmentation debris. November 2020 NASA:ODPO (from Space debris)
This is an artist's concept of the metric expansion of space, where a volume of the Universe is represented at each time interval by the circular sections. At left is depicted the rapid inflation from the initial state, followed thereafter by steadier expansion to the present day, shown at right. (from Outer space)
Mariner 10 image of Venus (1974) (from Space exploration)
A computer-generated image representing the locations, but not relative sizes, of space debris as could be seen from high Earth orbit. The two main debris fields are the ring of objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). (from Space debris)
Zodiacal light caused by cosmic dust. (from Cosmic dust)
Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer image NGC 1952 (from Space exploration)
Three-dimensional structure in Pillars of Creation. (from Interstellar medium)
Satellite hit by a space debris, animation by ESA (from Space debris)
A picture of Neptune taken by Voyager 2 (1989) (from Space exploration)
Part of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image showing a typical section of space containing galaxies interspersed by deep vacuum. Given the finite speed of light, this view covers the past 13 billion years of the history of outer space.
A dusty trail from the early Solar System to carbonaceous dust today. (from Cosmic dust)
Ganymede (moon) (from Space exploration)
Bow shock formed by the magnetosphere of the young star LL Orionis (center) as it collides with the Orion Nebula flow
Reconstruction of solar activity over 11,400 years. Period of equally high activity over 8,000 years ago marked. (from Space climate)
New Horizons image of Pluto (2015) (from Space exploration)
Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite orbited Earth at 939 to 215 km (583 to 134 mi) in 1957, and was soon followed by Sputnik 2. See First satellite by country (Replica Pictured) (from Space exploration)
Star cluster Pismis 24 and NGC 6357 (from Space exploration)
The Moon (2010) (from Space exploration)
A view beneath the clouds of Titan, as seen in false colour, created from a mosaic of images taken by Cassini (2013) (from Space exploration)
Vanguard 1 is expected to remain in orbit for 240 years. (from Space debris)
Known orbit planes of Fengyun-1C debris one month after the weather satellite's disintegration by the Chinese ASAT (from Space debris)
MESSENGER image of Mercury (2013) (from Space exploration)
A drifting thermal blanket photographed in 1998 during STS-88. (from Space debris)
Concept art for a NASA Vision mission (from Space exploration)
The Moon as seen in a digitally processed image from data collected during the 1992 Galileo spacecraft flyby (from Space exploration)
Self-portrait of Curiosity rover on Mars's surface (from Space exploration)
Spatial density of space debris by altitude according to ESA MASTER-2001, without debris from the Chinese ASAT and 2009 collision events (from Space debris)
The first image taken by a human of the whole Earth, probably photographed by William Anders of Apollo 8. South is up; South America is in the middle. (from Outer space)
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