Space Trivia

The first living creature sent into space by the US were two mice named Laska and Benjy in 1958. The Russians sent a dog.

Rock samples weighing a total of 840 pounds were brought back to Earth by the Apollo and Luna missions.

We know cockroaches can survive in space because an Apollo mission noticed one inside their space craft. When it returned, the craft was thoroughly inspected and no trace of the cockroach was found. The conclusion was that it crawled out while they were on the moon. The question is, "Did it survive??"

A meteor large enough to devastate the earth came within 280,000 miles on May 21, 1996.

Before going into space, astronauts are not allowed to eat beans because passing gas in a space suit damages it.

Five tons of propellant are burned each second by the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters.

The liquid hydrogen in the main engine of the Space Shuttle is -423 degrees F (-253 degrees C). That is the second coldest liquid on Earth. When it is burned with liquid oxygen, the combustion chamber of the engine reaches 6,000 degrees F (3.316 degrees C).

The coldest it gets in outer space is about 2.7 degrees Kelvin (-454 degrees Fahrenheit). Zero degrees Kelvin is 'absolute zero,' or the point at which molecules have no kinetic energy and stand still.

The tail of a comet points away from the sun at all times. The tails are caused by dust and gas which is lost by the comet and pushed away from the sun by solar winds, which are charged particles moving out from the sun, and by radiation pressure from the sun. When a comet is moving away from the sun, it's tail is leading.

The sun has enough energy to burn for 5 million years.

Uranus' satellites are all named after Shakespearean characters.

The planet Venus rotates clockwise. It is the only planet to do so.

There is no sound in space.