The average distance between the Earth and the Moon is 384,400 km (238,855 miles). It’s a vast number that’s difficult to truly comprehend, leading many people to believe the Moon is much closer to Earth than it actually is. Astronomical distances are often hard to grasp. While planets and stars are massive, the spaces between them are far greater—beyond the reach of our imagination.
Hint: they are all space rocks. But, there are some differences. The biggest difference between an asteroid and a comet, for example, is what they are made of.
What would it be like to stand on the surface of another planet? “We The Curious” channel has teamed up with a group of astrophysicists to create a scientifically accurate virtual reality tour of six real exoplanets discovered outside our solar system. The fruit of this collaboration is the video below, in 4K Ultra-HD and 360-degree. Narrated and produced by Ross Exton.
You can help NASA on some projects: for instance, citizen scientists helped NASA identify an aurora-related celestial phenomenon, now called STEVE. Want to become a citizen scientist? You can find projects on the
According to a new study, the Moon might have been formed a thousand years earlier than Earth. The new “synestia theory” suggests a Mars-sized object smashed into the proto-Earth. The “giant impact” vaporized about 10 percent of the rock and liquefied the rest, and created a rapidly spinning donut-shaped mass of vaporized rock called “synestia”. The synestia eventually shrunk and cooled. Computer models demonstrated that the Earth subsequently emerged about 1,000 years after the moon.
According to a new study, microbes like those found in Earth’s deep ocean could potentially thrive in the underground ocean of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Both molecular hydrogen (H2) and methane (CH4) already have been detected in the plume. Researchers have shown that Methanothermococcus
On February 6, 2018, SpaceX successfully tested Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket that the American company ever built. When lifted off, it became also the most powerful operational rocket in the world. Powerful rockets like Falcon Heavy may one day carry humans to the Moon or Mars. But there might be an even more important use of powerful rockets like SpaceX’ Falcon Heavy and BFR, Blue Origin’s New Glenn or NASA’s SLS: asteroid mining.
NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured a new Earth-Moon image on Jan. 17, 2018, from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers). Spacecraft used its NavCam1 imager to take this photo, as part of an engineering test. In the image, The Earth and the moon are just two bright dots against the vastness of black space – which reminds us of Carl Sagan’s famous speech: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”
It took 27 years, but finally, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft beat Voyager 1‘s record for being farthest from Earth while capturing images. Taken on December 5, 2017, New Horizons’ image of the open star cluster NGC 3532 (also commonly known as the Football Cluster or the Wishing Well Cluster) became the farthest image ever made by any spacecraft, breaking a 27-year record set by Voyager 1. But for a very short time! About 2 hours later, New Horizons broke its own record with images of two Kuiper Belt objects.
On 15 February 2013, an approximately 20-meter (66 feet) meteoroid (see notes 1) entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia with a speed of 19.16 ± 0.15 kilometers per second (60,000-69,000 km/h or 40,000-42,900 mph). Its mass is estimated at 7,000 to 10,000 tons, one of the largest meteoroids that entered Earth’s atmosphere in recent history. Then, at 9:20 am local time (03:20 UTC), it exploded some 20 to 30 kilometers above the city of Chelyabinsk and created a gigantic fireball (known as a superbolide, see notes 1) brighter than the Sun.