Interesting facts about space

 The endless and incredible space will remain a blank spot on the map for a long time, this is a fact. Humanity is now taking only the first timid steps towards its research, and who knows what awaits us there, beyond the unknown horizons? What amazing, or maybe scary discoveries? We only note that astronauts can rightfully be considered the most courageous of all people because, in order to look into the cosmic abyss, the fearlessness of a real explorer is required.

Space facts

• Thanks to the development of science, hundreds of planets are discovered annually in different star systems.
• Our knowledge of space is so modest that we don't even know what lies on the outskirts of our own solar system.
• Space is filled with harsh radiation, which poses a huge danger to astronauts. Its source is our own Sun.
• The largest space object ever built by mankind is the International Space Station or ISS.
• The ISS flying across the sky can be seen with ordinary field binoculars.
• Space has its own sound. The research vehicles of the Voyager mission series recorded how vibrating plasma sounds in interstellar space, as well as the sounds of the planets, in particular Saturn and Jupiter.
• All-stars in outer space appear white on the visual spectrum. Our Sun is also. It acquires a yellow color due to the refraction of rays in the atmosphere.
• All other planets of the solar system could be placed between our Earth and the Moon.
• The coldest place in known space is in the Boomerang Nebula. The measurements were made by the Hubble orbiting telescope, and they showed a temperature of -272 degrees Celsius, which is 2 degrees below the temperature of "absolute zero".
• Many stars that we see in the night sky exploded thousands or millions of years ago. It's just that the light of their explosions has not yet reached us.
• Most of the outer space is possibly filled with mysterious dark matter. What it is, and what properties it possesses - so far no one knows.
• Not only planets have rings. So, two rings have an asteroid called Chariklo.
• Black holes are the most massive objects in known space.
• Spiders in a state of weightlessness, being taken into space for experiments, begin to weave a spherical web instead of a flat one.
• Cosmonaut cats adapted to the state of zero gravity faster than any other living creature and mastered new conditions.
• Due to the lack of atmosphere, the boundaries of light and shadow, heat and cold in space are very clearly defined. The side of the orbital station illuminated by the rays of the Sun will be much more heated than the unlit side.
• Most astronauts, after spending time in orbit, take several weeks to get used to the fact that the surrounding objects have their own weight, and fall if they just let them go in the air.
• In Russia, space explorers are called cosmonauts, in the United States - astronauts, and in China - taikonauts.
• During the Space Race, the Americans were only a few days late in launching the pilot into space. The USSR got ahead of the Americans by launching the Vostok ship with Yuri Gagarin on board.
• The first person to go into outer space was cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. The exit lasted 12 minutes, and Leonov almost died, since he did not immediately manage to return back due to the fact that the spacesuit swelled in a vacuum, which prevented him from climbing back into the hatch.
• The famous Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman-cosmonaut. And far from the last.
• The only docking in the history of space exploration with a completely unguided man-made object was carried out as part of the mission to rescue the Salyut-7 orbital station, which was partially out of order. A documentary film "Notes from a Dead Station" and a feature film "Salyut-7" were filmed for this event.
• In July 1969, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent 2.5 hours on the lunar surface.
• The youngest astronaut in history was German Titov. At the time of the first flight, he was only 25 years old. He also became the first astronaut to sleep in space, in a state of weightlessness.
• Valery Polyakov spent the longest time in one space flight. His mission to the Mir orbital station lasted nearly 438 days.
• The greatest distance the cosmonauts moved away from the Earth is 400 thousand kilometers. It's about the Apollo 13 mission.
• Voyager 1 was the first human object to leave the solar system. Launched in 1977, it is the fastest exploration probe and continues to operate decades later, despite the mission being only 5 years old. In 2013, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space, and currently, it has covered a distance of 21 billion kilometers from Earth. He also made and sent to Earth the most distant photograph of our planet.
• The Hubble Orbiting Telescope has made a huge contribution to space exploration. He has already taken more than a million images of distant galaxies and nebulae.
• The temperature in low earth orbit is about +4 degrees, but only on the sunny side.
• In a few hours, more energy supplied by the sun's rays falls on the Earth than mankind generally uses in a year.
• Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev spent the most time in space. In total, he spent 803 days in orbit. An amazing fact: in 1991 he flew into space from the USSR, and in 1992 he returned to Russia.
• Not a single astronaut in the world has flown into space more than 7 times.
• The ISS is the most expensive facility ever built by mankind. Its value has passed over $ 100 billion long ago, and it has been continuously inhabited since its launch in 2000.
• The longest spacewalk was made by the American astronaut Susan Helms. She spent almost 9 hours outside the shuttle preparing the ISS for docking with the new module.
• The total volume of the ISS living compartments is approximately equal to the volume of the Boeing 747 passenger airliner.
• More than 13 people have never been in space at a time.
• Russian cosmonaut Alexei Solovyov holds the record for the number of spacewalks and for the total time spent there. In just 16 exits, he spent more than 82 hours in outer space.
• The ISS orbits at a speed of about 7.7 kilometers per second, and the astronauts from the crew meet 16 sunrises and sunsets every day.
• Despite the disasters during takeoffs and landings, outside the atmosphere, in space, not a single astronaut died.