Portal:Outer space
Introduction
Outer space (or simply space) is the expanse beyond celestial bodies and their atmospheres. It contains ultra-low levels of particle densities, constituting a near-perfect vacuum of predominantly hydrogen and helium plasma, permeated by electromagnetic radiation, cosmic rays, neutrinos, magnetic fields and dust. The baseline temperature of outer space, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvins (−270 °C; −455 °F).
The
Outer space does not begin at a definite altitude above Earth's surface. The Kármán line, an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above
The concept that the space between the Earth and the Moon must be a vacuum was first proposed in the 17th century after scientists discovered that
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stitched image is composed of 405 individual images taken with five different filters on the panoramic camera over the course of five Martian days.Image credit: United States Geological SurveyA composite image of Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest known volcano and mountain in the Solar System. This image was created from black-and-white imagery from the USGS's Mars Global Digital Image Mosaic and color imagery acquired from the 1978 visit of Viking 1.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.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.interactions with other galaxies.spiral arm towards the centre of the Milky Way.
In fact, when the picture is not coloured, is only red colored, the "Eagle" can be seen as a dark spot in the center of the nebula.probe has been able to survive more than a few hours on Venus's surface, which is completely obscured by clouds, because the atmospheric pressure is some 90 times that of the Earth's, and its surface temperature is around 450 °C (842 °F).Credit: William Anders"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.extra-vehicular activity (EVA) as construction resumes on the International Space Station. The landmasses depicted in the background are the South Island (left) and North Island (right) of New Zealand.A TRACE image of sunspots on the surface, or photosphere, of the sun from September 2002, is taken in the far ultraviolet on a relatively quiet day for solar activity. However, the image still shows a large sunspot group visible as a bright area near the horizon. Although sunspots are relatively cool regions on the surface of the sun, the bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots have a temperature of over one million °C (1.8 million °F). The high temperatures are thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma.lens, resulting from the small angle between Earth and the Sun. Carl Sagan came up with the idea of turning the spacecraft around to take a composite image of the Solar System. Six years later, he reflected, "All of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home."Map credit: Ignace-Gaston PardiesIgnace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673) was a French Catholic priest and scientist. His celestial atlas, entitled Globi coelestis in tabulas planas redacti descriptio, comprised six charts of the night sky and was first published in 1674. The atlas uses a gnomonic projection so that the plates make up a cube of the celestial sphere. The constellation figures are drawn from Uranometria, but were carefully reworked and adapted to a broader view of the sky. This is the second plate from a 1693 edition of Pardies's atlas, featuring constellations including Pegasus and Andromeda, visible in the northern sky.Photograph: NASA, ESA, A. Aloisi (STScI/ESA), and The Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble CollaborationAn image of NGC 4449, highlighting its qualities as a starburst galaxy. NGC 4449, an irregular galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici located about 12 million light years from Earth, has a rate of star formation twice that of the Milky Way's satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Interactions with nearby galaxies are thought to have influenced this star formation.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.UTC.Mercury is the smallest and closest to the Sun of the eight planets in the Solar System. It has no known natural satellites. The planet is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger to the gods.rotation period and seasonal cycles are also similar to those of the Earth. Of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbour liquid water and perhaps life. There are ongoing investigations assessing Mars's past potential for habitability, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including NASA's Mars 2020 rover and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Rosalind Franklin rover. In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of the planet. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped.
This picture is a true-colour image of Mars, taken from a distance of about 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, during its February 2007 flyby of the planet. The image was generated using OSIRIS's orange (red), green and blue filters.General images
The following are images from various outer space-related articles on Wikipedia.- Reconstruction of solar activity over 11,400 years. Period of equally high activity over 8,000 years ago marked. (from
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Zvezda, the base ISS crew module (from Space exploration)Crew quarters on
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SM-3 missile remain legal under space law, even though they create hazardous space debris (from Outer space)Conventional anti-satellite weapons such as the
- Model of Vostok spacecraft (from
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Voyager 1 is the first artificial object to reach the interstellar medium. (from Interstellar medium)
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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)Map showing the
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expansion of the universe, where space, including hypothetical non-observable portions of the universe, is represented at each time by the circular sections. On the left, the dramatic expansion occurs in the inflationary epoch; and at the center, the expansion accelerates (artist's concept; neither time nor size are to scale). (from Outer space)Timeline of the
- A drifting
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Zodiacal light caused by cosmic dust. (from Cosmic dust)
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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 distribution of
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chondrite dust particle (from Cosmic dust)Porous
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caterpillar. (from Interstellar medium)This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a
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Large-scale matter distribution in a cubic section of the universe. The blue fiber-like structures represent the matter, and the empty regions in between represent thecosmic voids of the intergalactic medium (from Outer space)
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Outer space from theinterstellar space is visible, as well as in the foreground, above Earth, the airglow of the ionosphere just below and beyond the so-defined edge of space the Kármán line in the thermosphere (from Outer space)
- Debris density in low Earth orbit (from
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Buzz Aldrin had a personal Communion service when he first arrived on the surface of the Moon. (from Space exploration)Astronaut
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Fengyun-1C debris one month after the weather satellite's disintegration by the Chinese ASAT (from Space debris)Known orbit planes of
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V-2 Rocket in the Peenemünde Museum (from Space exploration)
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Artemis 1 mission (from Outer space)Earth and the Moon as seen from cislunar space on the 2022
- Artistic image of a rocket lifting from a Saturn moon (from
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Bow shock formed by the magnetosphere of the young star LL Orionis (center) as it collides with the Orion Nebula flow
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space suit while outside their spacecraft.Because of the hazards of a vacuum, astronauts must wear a pressurized
- A dusty trail from the early Solar System to carbonaceous dust today. (from
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Delta-v's in km/s for various orbital maneuvers (from Space exploration)
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interplanetary dust cloud is illuminated and visible as zodiacal light, with its parts the false dawn, gegenschein and the rest of its band, which is visually crossed by the Milky Way (from Outer space)The black background is outer space as seen from Earth's surface at night. The
- Perseverance's backshell sitting upright on the surface of Jezero Crater (from
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outer space global commons have so far not reduced the debris or the growth of objects in orbit (from Space debris)Growth of tracked objects in orbit and related events; efforts to manage
- Major elements of 200 stratospheric interplanetary dust particles. (from
- Infographic showing the space debris situation in different kinds of orbits around Earth (from
- Artist's impression of dust formation around a supernova explosion. (from
- Spatial density of LEO space debris by altitude, according to 2011 a NASA report to the
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STS-121, a demonstration of orbiter heat shield repair techniques (from Outline of space science)Astronaut Piers Sellers during the third spacewalk of
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103P/Hartley (2010) (from Space exploration)Comet
- Illustration of Earth's atmosphere gradual transition into outer space (from
- Near-Earth space showing the low-Earth (blue), medium Earth (green), and high Earth (red) orbits. The last extends beyond the radius of geosynchronous orbits (from
- Vanguard 1 is expected to remain in orbit for 240 years. (from
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Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) is an important source of information on small-particle space debris. (from Space debris)The
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Magdeburg hemispheres (left) used to demonstrate Otto von Guericke's vacuum pump (right)The original
- 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
- Self-portrait of
- Concept art for a NASA Vision mission (from
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Interstellar medium andastrosphere meeting (from Interstellar medium)
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airglow is visible. (from Outer space)The boundary between space and Earth, at an altitude of 100 km, roughly where the yellow line of
- Smooth chondrite interplanetary dust particle. (from
- Spatial density of space debris by altitude according to ESA MASTER-2001, without debris from the Chinese ASAT and 2009 collision events (from
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Tupan Patera on Io (from Space exploration)
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'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)Debris impacts on Mir
- Apollo CSM in lunar orbit (from
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Thefirst image of Earth taken by a person. South is up. (from Outer space)
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Baker-Nunn cameras were widely used to study space debris. (from Space debris)
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A computer-generated map of objects orbiting Earth, as of 2005. About 95% areartificial satellites (from Outer space)
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comet Hale–Bopp are being shaped by pressure from solar radiation and the solar wind, respectively.The sparse plasma (blue) and dust (white) in the tail of
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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)
- A MESSENGER image from 18,000 km showing a region about 500 km across (2008) (from
- A proposed timeline of the origin of space, from
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micrometeoroid left this crater on the surface of Space Shuttle Challenger's front window on STS-7. (from Space debris)A
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James Webb Space Telescope to image the warm dust around a nearby young star, Fomalhaut, in order to study the first asteroid belt ever seen outside of the Solar System in infrared light. (from Cosmic dust)Astronomers used the
- Asteroid
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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)Atmospheric attenuation in
- The diversity found in the different types and scales of astronomical objects make the field of study increasingly specialized. (from
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Apollo 16 LEM Orion, the Lunar Roving Vehicle and astronaut John Young (1972) (from Space exploration)
- Saudi officials inspect a crashed PAM-D module in January 2001. (from
- Three-dimensional structure in
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TIROS-1 (1960) (from Space exploration)First television image of Earth from space, taken by
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A laser-guided observation of theMilky Way Galaxy at the Paranal Observatory in Chile in 2010 (from Outline of space science)
- Objects in Earth orbit including fragmentation debris, November 2020, NASA: ODPO (from
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Spirit rover (2004) (from Space exploration)Surface of Mars by the
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Spent upper stage of aXSS 10 satellite (from Space debris)
- Cosmic dust of the
- Cosmic dust of the
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For the first time, theESA / Canadian Space Agency / James Webb Space Telescope has observed the chemical signature of carbon-rich dust grains at redshift, which is roughly equivalent to one billion years after the birth of the Universe, this observation suggests exciting avenues of investigation into both the production of cosmic dust and the earliest stellar populations in our Universe. (from Cosmic dust)
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that, for the Space 220 Restaurant, Disney reached out to NASA engineers to understand what a space elevator might look like?
- ... that some severe environmental impacts of the invasion of Ukrainecan be seen from space?
- ... that the space industry of India has supported the launch of more than 100 domestic satellites and more than 300 foreign satellites?
- ... that Nature's Fynd, producer of microbe-based meat substitutes, is working with NASA to develop a bioreactor for use in space travel?
- ... that Louis W. Roberts was among the highest ranking African-American space program staff at NASA while the Apollo program was underway?
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