Space Trivia

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Estimates are that at least a million meteors have hit Earth's land surface, which is only 25 percent of the planet. Every last trace of more than 99 percent of the craters thus formed has vanished, erased by the effects of wind, water and living things.

Even though there were only six manned lunar landings, there are seven Apollo lunar landers on the moon. Apollo X, as part of their mission, dropped their lunar lander to test seismic equipment that had already been set up on a previous mission.

Experts believe that Manhattan is possibly the worst place in the United States to attempt stargazing during a clear night sky. Because of air pollution haze and city lights, the moon and the bright planets are about all that can be seen clearly.

Five times as many meteors can be seen after midnight as can seen before.

Four million tons of hydrogen dust are destroyed on the Sun every second.

Free-moving liquid in outer space will form itself into a sphere, because of its surface tension.

Galaxies come in many different shapes which are determined by the effects of past gravitational encounters with other galaxies. Our Milky Way is a spiral-type galaxy.

The surface of Venus is actually hotter than Mercury's, despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.

The surface of Venus--millions of miles away and hidden by clouds of sulphuric acid--has been better mapped than the earth's seabed.

The Earth weighs nearly 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

The surface temperature of a neutron star is about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit.

The energy released in one hour by a single sunspot is equal to all the electrical power that will be used in the United States over the next million years.

Launched in Sputnik II, Laika, a female Samoyed, became the first animal in space on November 3, 1957. She died when her oxygen supply was exhausted, and her capsule incinerated on reentry to the earth's atmosphere.

The tail of a comet can extend 90 million miles--nearly the distance between Earth and the sun.

The final resting place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker – the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer had trained the Apollo mission astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Dr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon on July 31, 1999, in an attempt to learn if there is water on the Moon.

Less than 50 percent of American adults understand that Earth orbits the Sun yearly, according to a basic science survey.

The tails of comets generally point away from the Sun whether the comet is approaching the Sun or receding.

The first photo of the planet Earth taken from space was shot from the Vanguard 2 in 1959.

Light from the Moon takes about a second and a half to reach Earth.

The Tarantula nebula is the largest known. It is 160,000 light-years away. If it was as close to us as the Orion nebula, its light would cast shadows on Earth.