The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) used during Space Shuttle launches are the largest solid-propellant motors ever flown and the first designed for reuse. Each is 149.16 feet long and 12.17 feet in diameter.
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The Galileo spacecraft traveled 2.4 billion miles on its way to Jupiter and along the way used about 67 gallons of fuel to control the flight path and spacecraft attitude. This is the equivalent of about 36 million miles per gallon, although Galileo's usage of fuel was not at all continuous, but rather occurred in discrete bursts.
The propellant mixture in each Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) consists of ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.9 percent by weight), aluminum (fuel, 16 percent), iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4 percent), a polymer (a binder that holds the mixture together, 12.04 percent), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96 percent).
Viking Lander 1 was originally scheduled to land on July 4, 1976, just as Mars Pathfinder will land on July 4. However, the landing was delayed and the site adjusted because the original site appeared too hazardous in Viking Orbiter photographs. Landing occurred July 20, 1976, seven years after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.
Stump your friends: who was the last astronaut to fly in space alone in a spacecraft? For you space buffs who immediately thought of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, think again. It was Apollo 17 command module pilot Ron Evans, who circled the Moon alone while astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt went to the surface.
Our Solar System, by virtue of its proper motion through our galaxy (the Milky Way) is moving at a speed of 43,000 miles per hour toward the globular cluster of stars known as M13 in the constellation Hercules.
Comet Hyakutake's orbit will carry it over 1000 astronomical units from the Sun before it once again heads back towards the Sun in another 7,000 years (1 astronomical unit = the average distance from the Earth to the Sun = 93 million miles = 150 million km). Such large orbits are not unusual for long-period comets. For comparison Pluto is on average 40 astronomical units from the Sun and orbits the Sun once every 248 years.
The largest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars. At a height of over 26 km (16 mi.), it is nearly 3 times taller than Mt. Everest. Olympus Mons is also enormous in its width: 600 km (360 mi.) across.
At Voyager 1's present distance, sunlight is only one five-thousandth as intense as it is on Earth. Radio signals from Voyager 1, traveling at the speed of light (300,000 kilometers per second) take 9 hours and 36 minutes to reach Earth.
The first experimental confirmation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was made during the total solar eclipse of May 29, 1919. During an eclipse, bright stars become visible. Einstein had predicted that gravity from the Sun would slightly bend the path of starlight passing close to the Sun. Astronomers tested this assertion by measuring the positions of several stars that appeared close to the Sun during the 1919 eclipse. The deviations in the observed positions of these stars due to the Sun's gravity matched Einstein's predictions.
The average distance between stars in the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy is currently estimated to be seven light years, or sixty-six trillion kilometers. This distance is equal to roughly 443,000 times the distance between the Earth and Sun.
Comets' tails point away from the Sun at all times. Thus, when a comet is moving away from the Sun, its tail is actually leading. Comet tails are caused by dust and gas being lost from the comet and then pushed away from the Sun by the solar wind (charged particles moving out from the Sun) and by radiation pressure from the Sun.
