Space Exploration Flashcards

• Probe: An unmanned spacecraft for gathering information in space.
• Moon: A natural object orbiting a planet.
• Universe: Everything that can be touched, felt, sensed, measured, and detected.
• Meteor: An asteroid that burns upon entering Earth's atmosphere.
• Solar System: The sun with all the celestial objects that surround it.
• Galaxy: A collection of gas, dust, billions of stars, and their systems held together by gravity.
• Orbit: A regular, repeating path of one object around another.
• Rover: A mobile robot sent to space for exploration and data collection.
• Habitable Zone: The region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface.
• Gravity: The force of attraction that pulls all matter together
• Asteroids: Chunks of rock and metal orbiting the Sun.
• Dwarf Planet: A celestial body, round like a planet, that hasn't cleared its space lane.
• Meteorite: An asteroid fragment the survives the Earth's atmosphere and lands on the surface.
• Celestial Body: Any object in space.
• Canadarm: Canada’s contribution to the ISS, for spacecraft docking, moving modules/equipment, and assisting spacewalks.
• Comet: Large chunks of ice and dust orbiting the Sun.

Planet Criteria

• Orbits the Sun.
• Has a nearly perfectly round shape.
• Has cleared its space lane.

Dwarf Planet Criteria

• Is in orbit around the Sun.
• Has a nearly round shape.
• Has not cleared its space lane.
• Is not a satellite.

Solar System Formation

• Gravity formed a nebula, where gas and dust concentrated to form the sun.
• Planets formed around the sun approximately 100 million years later.

Moon Formation Theory

• A collision between Earth and a smaller planet.
• The debris from this collision coalesced to form the moon.

Importance of the Sun's Gravity

• Keeps all celestial bodies in the Solar System in orbit.
• Without the sun the solar system would collapse.

Mass vs. Weight

• Weight: Measurement of gravitational force on an object.
• Mass: The amount of matter in an object.

Planetary Weight Differences

• Varying gravitational pull on different planets.
• A stronger pull means more weight, and a weaker pull means less weight.

Discovery of Gravity

• Isaac Newton is credited with elucidating gravity

Importance of Gravity

• Keeps objects on Earth's surface.
• Enables Earth to orbit the Sun.
• Prevents celestial objects from collapsing.

Asteroid Belt Facts

• Located between Mars and Jupiter.
• Contains hundreds of thousands of asteroids.
• Some asteroids are forced out and flung into the outer solar system.

Light Emitters

• Objects that create their own light.
• Examples: Sun, stars, fire.

Light Reflectors

• Objects that reflect light from other soruces.
• Examples: Moon, rocks, planets.