Portal:Outer space

The Outer Space Portal

Introduction

Because of the hazards of a vacuum, astronauts must wear a pressurized space suit while off-Earth and outside their spacecraft.

Outer space, or simply space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth's atmosphere and between celestial bodies. It contains ultra-low levels of particle densities, constituting a near-perfect vacuum of predominantly hydrogen and helium plasma, permeated by electromagnetic radiation, cosmic rays, neutrinos, magnetic fields and dust. The baseline temperature of outer space, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvins (−270 °C; −455 °F).

The plasma between galaxies is thought to account for about half of the baryonic (ordinary) matter in the universe, having a number density of less than one hydrogen atom per cubic metre and a kinetic temperature of millions of kelvins. Local concentrations of matter have condensed into stars and galaxies. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the universe, but even galaxies and star systems consist almost entirely of empty space. Most of the remaining mass-energy in the observable universe is made up of an unknown form, dubbed dark matter and dark energy.

Outer space does not begin at a definite altitude above Earth's surface. The Kármán line, an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above sea level, is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping. Certain portions of the upper stratosphere and the mesosphere are sometimes referred to as "near space". The framework for international space law was established by the Outer Space Treaty, which entered into force on 10 October 1967. This treaty precludes any claims of national sovereignty and permits all states to freely explore outer space. Despite the drafting of UN resolutions for the peaceful uses of outer space, anti-satellite weapons have been tested in Earth orbit.

The concept that the space between the Earth and the Moon must be a vacuum was first proposed in the 17th century after scientists discovered that air pressure decreased with altitude. The immense scale of outer space was grasped in the 20th century when the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy was first measured. Humans began the physical exploration of space later in the same century with the advent of high-altitude balloon flights. This was followed by crewed rocket flights and, then, crewed Earth orbit, first achieved by Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union in 1961. The economic cost of putting objects, including humans, into space is very high, limiting human spaceflight to low Earth orbit and the Moon. On the other hand, uncrewed spacecraft have reached all of the known planets in the Solar System. Outer space represents a challenging environment for human exploration because of the hazards of vacuum and radiation. Microgravity has a negative effect on human physiology that causes both muscle atrophy and bone loss. (Full article...)

Selected article

Pluto is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-largest body observed directly orbiting the Sun. Originally classified as the ninth planet from the Sun, Pluto was recategorized as a dwarf planet and plutoid owing to the discovery that it is only one of several large bodies within the Kuiper belt. Like other members of the belt, it is primarily composed of rock and ice and is relatively small; approximately a fifth the mass of the Earth's Moon and a third its volume. It has an eccentric orbit that takes it from 30 to 49 AU (4.4–7.4 billion km) from the Sun, and is highly inclined with respect to the planets. As a result, Pluto occasionally comes closer to the Sun than the planet Neptune. Pluto has five known moons, the largest being Charon, discovered in 1978, along with Nix and Hydra, discovered in 2005, and the provisionally named S/2011 (134340) 1, discovered in 2011, and S/2012 (134340) 1, discovered in 2012.

Selected picture

• 
  James Webb Space Telescope

  Photo: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham/Emmett Given

  Six beryllium mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) undergoing a series of cryogenic tests at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The JWST is a planned space telescope that is a joint collaboration of 20 countries. It will orbit the Sun approximately 1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) beyond the Earth, around the L₂ Lagrange point. It is expected to launch in December 2021.
• 
  Mars

  Photograph credit: European Space Agency

  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is known as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance as seen from Earth. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. A terrestrial planet, Mars has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of the Earth. The planet has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, as well as the largest canyon, Valles Marineris. Mars's rotation period and seasonal cycles are also similar to those of the Earth. Of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbour liquid water and perhaps life. There are ongoing investigations assessing Mars's past potential for habitability, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including NASA's Mars 2020 rover and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Rosalind Franklin rover. In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of the planet. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped.
  
  This picture is a true-colour image of Mars, taken from a distance of about 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, during its February 2007 flyby of the planet. The image was generated using OSIRIS's orange (red), green and blue filters.
• 
  STS-116

  Photo credit: NASA

  NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang participate in STS-116's first of three planned sessions of extra-vehicular activity (EVA) as construction resumes on the International Space Station. The landmasses depicted in the background are the South Island (left) and North Island (right) of New Zealand.
• 
  Ignace-Gaston Pardies

  Map credit: Ignace-Gaston Pardies

  Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673) was a French Catholic priest and scientist. His celestial atlas, entitled Globi coelestis in tabulas planas redacti descriptio, comprised six charts of the night sky and was first published in 1674. The atlas uses a gnomonic projection so that the plates make up a cube of the celestial sphere. The constellation figures are drawn from Uranometria, but were carefully reworked and adapted to a broader view of the sky. This is the second plate from a 1693 edition of Pardies's atlas, featuring constellations including Pegasus and Andromeda, visible in the northern sky.
• 
  Europa (moon)

  Photo credit: NASA/JPL

  Realistic-color mosaic of images of Jupiter's moon Europa taken by NASA's Jupiter orbiter Galileo in 1995 and 1998. This view of the moon's anti-Jovian hemisphere shows numerous lineae, linear features created via a tectonic process in which crustal plates of water ice floating on a subsurface ocean (kept warm by tidal flexing) shift in relative position. Reddish regions are areas where the ice has a higher mineral content. The north polar region is at right. (Geologic features are annotated in Commons.)
• 
  Space Shuttle Endeavour

  Photo: NASA/Crew of Expedition 22

  Space Shuttle Endeavour in a photograph taken from the International Space Station, in which the shuttle appears to straddle the stratosphere and mesosphere. During this mission, STS-130, the shuttle's primary payloads were the Tranquility module and the Cupola, a robotic control station which provides a 360-degree view around the station.
• 
  Jupiter

  Diagram: Kelvin Song

  A diagram of Jupiter showing a model of the planet's interior, with a rocky core overlaid by a deep layer of liquid metallic hydrogen and an outer layer predominantly of molecular hydrogen. Jupiter's true interior composition is uncertain. For instance, the core may have shrunk as convection currents of hot liquid metallic hydrogen mixed with the molten core and carried its contents to higher levels in the planetary interior. Furthermore, there is no clear physical boundary between the hydrogen layers—with increasing depth the gas increases smoothly in temperature and density, ultimately becoming liquid.
• 

  

  Astronaut Steve Robinson on a spacewalk, August 2005

  Extra-vehicular activity

  Credit: NASA

  Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) is work done by an astronaut away from the Earth and outside of his or her spacecraft. EVAs may be made outside a craft orbiting Earth (a spacewalk) or on the surface of the Moon (a moonwalk). Shown here is Steve Robinson on the first EVA to perform an in-flight repair of the Space Shuttle (August 3 2005).
• 

  

  Orion Nebula

  Orion Nebula

  Credit: Hubble Space Telescope

  A composite photo of the Orion Nebula, the closest region of star formation to Earth. It is composed of 520 separate images and NASA calls it "one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced". The nebula is located below Orion's Belt and is visible to the naked eye at night. It is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky, and is among the most intensely-studied celestial features.
• 

  

  Sombrero Galaxy

  Sombrero Galaxy M104

  Credit: NASA / STScI

  The Sombrero Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the Virgo constellation. It was discovered in the late 1700s. It is about 28 million light years away and is just faint enough to be invisible to the naked eye but easily visible with small telescopes. In our sky, it is about one-fifth the diameter of the full moon. M104 is moving away from Earth at about 1,000 kilometers per second.

  
  
  
• 

  

  TRACE image of sunspots

  Sunspot

  Credit: NASA/TRACE

  A TRACE image of sunspots on the surface, or photosphere, of the sun from September 2002, is taken in the far ultraviolet on a relatively quiet day for solar activity. However, the image still shows a large sunspot group visible as a bright area near the horizon. Although sunspots are relatively cool regions on the surface of the sun, the bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots have a temperature of over one million °C (1.8 million °F). The high temperatures are thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma.
• 
  Andromeda Galaxy

  Photo: Adam Evans

  The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years away. The image, created using a hydrogen-alpha filter, also shows Messier objects 32 and 110, as well as NGC 206 and the star Nu Andromedae. On December 15, 1612, German astronomer Simon Marius became the first person to describe the galaxy using a telescope.
• 

  

  433 Eros asteroid

  433 Eros

  Credit: NASA

  The asteroid 433 Eros was named after the Greek god of love Eros. This S-type asteroid is the second-largest near-Earth asteroid. This image shows the view looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end.
• 

  

  Space Shuttle Atlantis launch plume

  Space Shuttle program

  Credit: NASA/Fir0002

  The launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-98, February 7 2001, at sunset. The sun is behind the camera, and the shape of the plume is cast across the vault of the sky, intersecting the rising full moon. The top portion of the plume is bright because it is illuminated directly by the sun; the lower portions are in the Earth's shadow. After launch, the shuttle must engage in a pitch and roll program so that the vehicle is below the external tank and SRBs, as evidenced in the plume trail. The vehicle climbs in a progressively flattening arc, because achieving low orbit requires much more horizontal than vertical acceleration.

  
  
  
• 
  Helix Nebula

  Photograph: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

  The Helix Nebula is a large planetary nebula located in the constellation Aquarius. Discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding, probably before 1824, it is one of the closest to Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae, about 215 parsecs (700 light-years) away. It is similar in appearance to the Cat's Eye Nebula and the Ring Nebula.
• 
  NGC 4414

  Photograph: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

  NGC 4414 is an unbarred spiral galaxy about 62 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It is a flocculent spiral galaxy, with short segments of spiral structure but without the dramatic well-defined spiral arms of a grand design spiral. NGC 4414 is a very isolated galaxy, with no signs of past interactions with other galaxies.
• 
  Pale Blue Dot

  Photo credit: NASA/JPL

  Pale Blue Dot is the name given to this 1990 photo of Earth taken from Voyager 1 when its vantage point reached the edge of the Solar System, a distance of roughly 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometres). Earth can be seen as a blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right. The light band over Earth is an artifact of sunlight scattering in the camera's lens, resulting from the small angle between Earth and the Sun. Carl Sagan came up with the idea of turning the spacecraft around to take a composite image of the Solar System. Six years later, he reflected, "All of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home."
• 
  Lunar phase

  Image: Tom Ruen

  An animation of the phases of the Moon. As the Moon revolves around the Earth, the Sun lights the Moon from a different side, creating the different phases. In the image, the Moon appears to get bigger as well as "wobble" slightly. Tidal locking synchronizes the Moon's rotation period on its axis to match its orbital period around the earth. These two periods nearly cancel each other out, except that the Moon's orbit is elliptical. This causes its orbital motion to speed up when closer to the Earth, and slow down when farther away, causing the Moon's apparent diameter to change, as well as the wobbling motion observed.
• 
  Neptune

  Photograph credit: NASA / JPL

  Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun in the Solar System. In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter, the third-most-massive planet and the densest giant planet. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth, slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus. Neptune is denser and physically smaller than Uranus because its greater mass causes more gravitational compression of its atmosphere. Neptune orbits the Sun once every 164.8 years at an average distance of 30.1 au (4.5 billion km; 2.8 billion mi). It is named after the Roman god of the sea and has the astronomical symbol ♆, a stylised version of the god Neptune's trident.
  
  This picture of Neptune was taken by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, at a range of 4.4 million miles (7.1 million kilometres) from the planet, approximately four days before closest approach. The photograph shows the Great Dark Spot, a storm about the size of Earth, in the centre, while the fast-moving bright feature nicknamed the "Scooter" and the Small Dark Spot can be seen on the western limb. These clouds were seen to persist for as long as the spacecraft's cameras could resolve them.
• 
  STS-1

  Photo credit: NASA

  A timed exposure of the first Space Shuttle mission, STS-1. The shuttle Columbia stands on launch pad A at Kennedy Space Center, the night before launch. The objectives of the maiden flight were to check out the overall Shuttle system, accomplish a safe ascent into orbit and to return to Earth for a safe landing.
• 
  NGC 6357

  Photograph credit: NASA

  NGC 6357 is a diffuse nebula in the constellation Scorpius. This composite image of the nebula contains X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from the SuperCosmos Sky Survey (blue). Radiation from hot, young stars is energizing the cooler gas in the clouds that surround them. Often known as the Lobster Nebula, the astronomical object has also been termed the Madokami Nebula by fans of the anime Madoka Magica due to its supposed resemblance to the main character. Scientists at the Midcourse Space Experiment prefer the name War and Peace Nebula, because the bright, western part resembles a dove, while the eastern part looks like a skull in infrared images.
• 

  

  Earth

  The Blue Marble

  Credit: The Apollo 17 crew

  "The Blue Marble" is a famous photograph of Earth. NASA officially credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew — Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt — all of whom took photographic images during the mission. Apollo 17 passed over Africa during daylight hours and Antarctica is also illuminated. The photograph was taken approximately five hours after the spacecraft's launch, while en route to the Moon. Apollo 17, notably, was the last manned lunar mission; no humans since have been at a range where taking a "whole-Earth" photograph such as "The Blue Marble" would be possible.

Space-related portals

General images

The following are images from various outer space-related articles on Wikipedia.

• 
  Concept art for a NASA Vision mission (from Space exploration)
• 
  Smooth chondrite interplanetary dust particle. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Herbig–Haro object HH 110 ejects gas through interstellar space. (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  Illustration of Earth's atmosphere gradual transition into outer space (from Outer space)
• 
  A computer-generated animation by the European Space Agency representing space debris in low earth orbit at the current rate of growth compared to mitigation measures being taken (from Space debris)
• 
  Spatial density of space debris by altitude according to ESA MASTER-2001, without debris from the Chinese ASAT and 2009 collision events (from Space debris)
• 
  Debris density in low Earth orbit (from Space debris)
• 
  Cosmic dust of the Andromeda Galaxy as revealed in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Newton's cannonball, an illustration of how objects can "fall" in a curve around the planet (from Outer space)
• 
  For the first time, the NASA / ESA / Canadian Space Agency / James Webb Space Telescope has observed the chemical signature of carbon-rich dust grains at redshift z ≈ 7, which is roughly equivalent to one billion years after the birth of the Universe, this observation suggests exciting avenues of investigation into both the production of cosmic dust and the earliest stellar populations in our Universe. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  View from International Space Station, showing the yellow-green airglow of Earth's ionosphere with the Milky Way in the background. (from Outer space)
• 
  Space Shuttle Endeavour had a major impact on its radiator during STS-118. The entry hole is about 5.5 mm (0.22 in), and the exit hole is twice as large. (from Space debris)
• 
  Conventional anti-satellite weapons such as the SM-3 missile remain legal under the law of armed conflict, even though they create hazardous space debris (from Outer space)
• 
  Self-portrait of Curiosity rover on Mars's surface (from Space exploration)
• 
  Because of the hazards of a vacuum, astronauts must wear a pressurized space suit while outside their spacecraft.
• 
  View of an orbital debris hole made in the panel of the Solar Max satellite (from Space debris)
• 
  Infographic showing the space debris situation in different kinds of orbits around Earth (from Space debris)
• 
  Model of Vostok spacecraft (from Space exploration)
• 
  Concept for a space-based solar power system to beam energy down to Earth (from Outer space)
• 
  Saudi officials inspect a crashed PAM-D module in January 2001. (from Space debris)
• 
  Tupan Patera on Jupiter's moon Io (from Space exploration)
• 
  Asteroid 4 Vesta, imaged by the Dawn spacecraft (2011) (from Space exploration)
• 
  A dusty trail from the early Solar System to carbonaceous dust today. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Growth of tracked objects in orbit and related events; efforts to manage outer space global commons have so far not reduced the debris or the growth of objects in orbit (from Space debris)
• 
  Vanguard 1 is expected to remain in orbit for 240 years. (from Space debris)
• 
  Reconstruction of solar activity over 11,400 years. Period of equally high activity over 8,000 years ago marked. (from Space climate)
• 
  Apollo Command Service Module in lunar orbit (from Space exploration)
• 
  The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) is an important source of information on small-particle space debris. (from Space debris)
• 
  Astronaut Piers Sellers during the third spacewalk of STS-121, a demonstration of orbiter heat shield repair techniques (from Outline of space science)
• 
  A wide field view of outer space as seen from Earth's surface at night. The interplanetary dust cloud is visible as the horizontal band of zodiacal light, including the false dawn (edges) and gegenschein (center), which is visually crossed by the Milky Way (from Outer space)
• 
  Artistic image of a rocket lifting from a Saturn moon (from Space exploration)
• 
  Distribution of Matter in a cubic section of the universe. The blue fiber-like structures represent matter, while the empty regions show the cosmic voids (from Outer space)
• 
  Bow shock formed by the magnetosphere of the young star LL Orionis (center) as it collides with the Orion Nebula flow
• 
  The diversity found in the different types and scales of astronomical objects make the field of study increasingly specialized. (from Outline of space science)
• 
  Major elements of 200 stratospheric interplanetary dust particles. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  A computer-generated map of objects orbiting Earth, as of 2005. About 95% are debris, not working artificial satellites (from Outer space)
• 
  Atmospheric attenuation in dB/km as a function of frequency over the EHF band. Peaks in absorption at specific frequencies are a problem, due to atmosphere constituents such as water vapor (H₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  Debris impacts on Mir's solar panels degraded their performance. The damage is most noticeable on the panel on the right, which is facing the camera with a high degree of contrast. Extensive damage to the smaller panel below is due to impact with a Progress spacecraft. (from Space debris)
• 
  South is up in the first image of Earth taken by a person, probably by Bill Anders (during the 1968 Apollo 8 mission) (from Outer space)
• 
  Buzz Aldrin taking a core sample of the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission (from Space exploration)
• 
  Earth and the Moon as seen from cislunar space on the 2022 Artemis 1 mission (from Outer space)
• 
  Gabbard diagram of almost 300 pieces of debris from the disintegration of the five-month-old third stage of the Chinese Long March 4 booster on 11 March 2000 (from Space debris)
• 
  Delta-v's in km/s for various orbital maneuvers (from Space exploration)
• 
  Crew quarters on Zvezda, the base ISS crew module (from Space exploration)
• 
  A drifting thermal blanket photographed in 1998 during STS-88 (from Space debris)
• 
  Voyager 1 is the first artificial object to reach the interstellar medium. (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  Surface of Mars by the Spirit rover (2004) (from Space exploration)
• 
  Comet 103P/Hartley (2010) (from Space exploration)
• 
  Apollo 16 LEM Orion, the Lunar Roving Vehicle and astronaut John Young (1972) (from Space exploration)
• 
  A laser-guided observation of the Milky Way Galaxy at the Paranal Observatory in Chile in 2010 (from Outline of space science)
• 
  A micrometeoroid left this crater on the surface of Space Shuttle Challenger's front window on STS-7. (from Space debris)
• 
  Illustration of a satellite breaking up into multiple pieces at higher altitudes (from Space debris)
• 
  Map showing the Sun located near the edge of the Local Interstellar Cloud and Alpha Centauri about 4 light-years away in the neighboring G-Cloud complex (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  V-2 Rocket in the Peenemünde Museum (from Space exploration)
• 
  Interstellar medium and astrosphere meeting (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  The sparse plasma (blue) and dust (white) in the tail of comet Hale–Bopp are being shaped by pressure from solar radiation and the solar wind, respectively.
• 
  Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to image the warm dust around a nearby young star, Fomalhaut, in order to study the first asteroid belt ever seen outside of the Solar System in infrared light. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Timeline of the expansion of the universe, where space is represented schematically at each time by circular sections. On the left, the dramatic expansion of inflation; at the center, the expansion accelerates (artist's concept; neither time nor size are to scale) (from Outer space)
• 
  Perseverance's backshell sitting upright on the surface of Jezero Crater (from Space debris)
• 
  Known orbit planes of Fengyun-1C debris one month after the weather satellite's disintegration by the Chinese ASAT (from Space debris)
• 
  A proposed timeline of the origin of space, from physical cosmology (from Outline of space science)
• 
  A MESSENGER image from 18,000 km showing a region about 500 km across (2008) (from Space exploration)
• 
  After reentry, Delta 2 second stage pieces were found in South Africa. (from Space debris)
• 
  Space debris identified as WT1190F, burning up in a fireball over Sri Lanka (from Space debris)
• 
  The distribution of ionized hydrogen (known by astronomers as H II from old spectroscopic terminology) in the parts of the Galactic interstellar medium visible from the Earth's northern hemisphere as observed with the Wisconsin Hα Mapper (Haffner et al. 2003). (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  Artist's impression of dust formation around a supernova explosion. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  First television image of Earth from space, taken by TIROS-1 (1960) (from Space exploration)
• 
  The original Magdeburg hemispheres (left) used to demonstrate Otto von Guericke's vacuum pump (right)
• 
  Objects in Earth orbit including fragmentation debris, November 2020, NASA: ODPO (from Space debris)
• 
  Spatial density of LEO space debris by altitude, according to 2011 a NASA report to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (from Space debris)
• 
  NASA computer-generated image of debris objects in Earth orbit, c. 2005 (from Space debris)
• 
  Porous chondrite dust particle (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Cosmic dust of the Horsehead Nebula as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Three-dimensional structure in Pillars of Creation. (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  Near-Earth space showing the low-Earth (blue), medium Earth (green), and high Earth (red) orbits. The last extends beyond the radius of geosynchronous orbits (from Outer space)
• 
  Baker-Nunn cameras were widely used to study space debris. (from Space debris)
• 
  This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar. (from Interstellar medium)
• 
  Spent upper stage of a Delta II rocket, photographed by the XSS 10 satellite (from Space debris)
• 
  Zodiacal light caused by cosmic dust. (from Cosmic dust)
• 
  Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had a personal Communion service when he first arrived on the surface of the Moon. (from Space exploration)

Did you know (auto-generated)

• ... that, for the Space 220 Restaurant, Disney reached out to NASA engineers to understand what a space elevator might look like?
• ... that some severe environmental impacts of the invasion of Ukraine can be seen from space?
• ... that the space industry of India has supported the launch of more than 100 domestic satellites and more than 300 foreign satellites?
• ... that Nature's Fynd, producer of microbe-based meat substitutes, is working with NASA to develop a bioreactor for use in space travel?
• ... that Louis W. Roberts was among the highest ranking African-American space program staff at NASA while the Apollo program was underway?

Space news

Upcoming spaceflight launches

For a full schedule of launches and deep-space rendezvous, see 2025 in spaceflight.

Astronomical events

Topics

By year

Categories

Category puzzle

Select [►] to view subcategories

Outer space

Outer space lists

Outer space by century

Outer space by decade

Outer space by year

Works about outer space

Space art

Astronomical objects

Astronomy images

Astropolitics

Cosmic dust

Space exploration

Industry in space

Intergalactic media

Interstellar media

Life in outer space

Message artifacts

Music in space

People associated with outer space

Satellites

Solar System

Space applications

Space industry

Space law

Space photography and videography

Space physics

Space robots

Space technology

Spaceflight

Outer space stubs

Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

• 

  Commons
  Free media repository

• 

  Wikibooks
  Free textbooks and manuals

• 

  Wikidata
  Free knowledge base

• 

  Wikinews
  Free-content news

• 

  Wikiquote
  Collection of quotations

• 

  Wikisource
  Free-content library

• 

  Wikiversity
  Free learning tools

• 

  Wiktionary
  Dictionary and thesaurus

Discover Wikipedia using portals

• 

  List of all portals
• 
  The arts portal
• 
  Biography portal
• 
  Current events portal
• 
  Geography portal
• 
  History portal
• 
  Mathematics portal
• 
  Science portal
• 
  Society portal
• 
  Technology portal

• 

  Random portal

• 

  WikiProject Portals