World Space Week 2017
Life in space holds the fascination of many, evidenced by the sheer number of TV programmes, movies, books, and games that allow us to imagine what it would be like. But is this even a remote possibility? Space exploration has really taken off in the last couple of decades to answer just this question.
This week, 4-10 October, we’ve been celebrating World Space Week. We’ve uncovered some mind-bending facts about the exploration of new worlds in space. Which fact do you think is most out of this world?
NASA’s space probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt has been en route for 4279 days. The New Horizons mission flew past Pluto in July 2015, collecting the first sets of data about this dwarf planet. The first features on the planet’s surface were named in September 2017.
More than half a million asteroids have been identified since the first one was discovered in 1801. A group of those on the asteroid belt contain large deposits of metals, which are currently being explored for metal mining opportunities.
Earth-sized swirling storms at the poles of Jupiter were discovered on the Juno mission, which arrived at the planet in July 2016. It’s not yet sure whether these storms are dynamic or stable, and what affects they have on the rest of the atmosphere.
Mars is our biggest hope of extraterrestrial settlements. Samples taken by the Curiosity Rover from the planet have suggested that it was similar to an early Earth, and that habitable environments existed about 3.5 billion years ago.
Stars similar to our Sun have orbiting habitable planets, as proven by the Kepler satellite, which identified its first Earth-sized planet in 2015.
Images: 1) Stanford Torus interior by Donald Davis for NASA. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 2) Kepler186f-ArtistConcept by NASA Ames. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
