Extreme Space Facts PDF

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Administration Extreme Space Facts www.nasa.gov  Chill out! Air M...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Administration Extreme Space Facts www.nasa.gov  Chill out! Air Martian! 16 eXtreme space facts! Craters at the Moon’s south pole may be the frostiest locale The gravity on Mars is ap- in the entire solar system. In the permanently shadowed proximately one-third that crater floors, “daytime” temperatures may never rise above on Earth. Yes, chances are minus 238 degrees Celsius (minus 397 degrees Fahrenheit). you’d be able to dunk the basketball on a Martian Windiest court. Neptune’s winds are the fastest in the solar system, reaching 2,575 kilometers per hour (1,600 miles per hour)! Neptune’s Pizza? giant, spinning storms could swallow the whole Earth. Better stick with a rubber ducky Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our Tiny, very tiny solar system. The moon’s bizarre, blotted yellowish surface Saturn is the only planet in our solar system that is less looks like a pepperoni pizza! dense than water. It could float in a bathtub if anybody could The radio signal that a spacecraft uses to contact Earth has build a bathtub big enough. no more power than a refrigerator light bulb. And by the time Skating, anyone? the signal has traveled across Fastest If you ice skate, how about Europa? Europa is one of the space, the signal is only one- four largest moons of Jupiter. It’s a little smaller than Earth’s True to its namesake (the speedy messenger of ancient Ro- billionth of one-billionth of Moon. Europa is covered in ice, including some smooth ice! man gods), Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system. one watt! A 3-foot (about 1 meter) Axel jump on this moon would take It zips around our Sun at an average of 172,000 kilometers per hour (107,000 miles per hour) — about 65,000 kph Big, way big you 22 feet (more than 6 meters) high, with the same landing speed as on Earth. (40,000 mph) faster than Earth. A year on Mercury is equal To detect those tiny signals to 88 Earth days. from space, the Deep Space Grandest Canyon Network uses dish antennas Biggest and smallest! The largest canyon system in the solar system is Valles with diameters of up to 70 meters Marineris on Mars. It’s more than 4,000 kilometers Ceres is the largest, most massive body in the main asteroid (230 feet). That’s almost as big as a football field. (3,000 miles) long — enough to stretch from California to belt between Mars and Jupiter, totaling about a third of the Not much! New York. It is nine times as long and four times as deep total mass of the entire belt. But Ceres is the smallest of the as Earth’s Grand Canyon! dwarf planets, which include Pluto and Eris, and the only If you could lump together all the thousands of known aster- dwarf planet that resides in the asteroid belt. oids in our solar system, their total mass wouldn’t even equal Sizzling Venus 10 percent of the mass of Earth’s Moon. The average temperature on Forget the socks, bring a hat It’s a small world after all Venus is more than 480 degrees Celsius (about 900 degrees If you could stand at the Martian More than 1,300 Earths would fit into Jupiter’s vast sphere. Fahrenheit) — hotter than a self- equator, the temperature at your feet would be like a warm spring Easy does it cleaning oven. day, but at your head it would be A Venus day is approximately 243 Earth days long. The bad freezing cold! news is we would have to wait up to three Earth years for a To learn many more cool facts about the solar weekend. That’s because a day on Venus is longer than its system, visit: year! solarsystem.nasa.gov JPL 400-1086 Rev. 1 8/10