Great Blue Marble Amazing Space Images and Space Facts. Images and Facts on ISS Space Station, Mars, Earth, Moon, Galaxies, Nebulas, Asteroids, and Comets.

Space / Galaxies	Mars / NASA	Man in Space	Space / Earth


Our solar system is not alone, we are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of stars. If you look up on a dark cloudless night you might see what appears to be clouds in space. What you are seeing is in fact thousands of other distant stars that are a group of stars we call the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy is one of many galaxies. Our universe is probably made up of over 100 billion galaxies. The Milky way Galaxy is what we call a spiral galaxy. It has many arms that spiral around its center. It was named because the band of bright stars reminded our ancestors of mothers milk.	How far is mars from the sun? The semi-major axis of Mars' orbit about the sun is 1.52 Astronomical Units (A.U.) or 142 million miles (228 million km). How far is Mars from the Earth? At the 2001 Mars opposition, the planet was approximately 43 million miles (68 million km) from Earth. What are the dimensions of Mars? Mars has a diameter of 4,222 miles (6,794 km) at the equator. The Martian surface contains thousands of impact craters because, unlike Earth , Mars has a stable crust, low erosion rate and no active sources of lava. So, impact craters on Mars are not obliterated as they are on Earth.	In 1957 Russia put into orbit the first satellite, Sputnik, and the first animal, Laika the dog. In 1961 Yuri Gagarin of the USSR is the first human in space, followed by Alan Shepard of the United States. President Kennedy sets the ambitious goal of landing on the moon before the decade ends. In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova of the USSR is the first woman in space. On July 20, 1969, humans land on the Moon aboard Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin collect lunar samples and return them to Earth. In 1971 the USSR sends up Salyut 1, the first orbital space station.	Scientists believe our universe began with a "big bang" some 12-15 billion years ago. If all the events in the history of the universe until now were squeezed into 24 hours, Earth wouldn't form until late afternoon and humans would have existed for only two seconds. The Earth's surface is rotating about its axis at 1,532 feet per second at the equator, and the planet zips around the Sun at more than 18 miles per second. Perhaps Earth's most distinguishing factor, is the presence of water, which contributed to the formation of life some 3,000 million years ago.

A galaxy is a huge collection of stars, gas and dust measuring many light years across. There are many different types of galaxies, spiral, elliptical and barred spiral as well as many others. Andromeda is a spiral galaxy , M87 a Giant Elliptical galaxy is surrounded by many globular clusters, The whirlpool galaxy is a galaxy that is interacting with a nearby galaxy. Antennae is two spiral galaxies that have collided. Centaurus A is the result of a spiral galaxy and a elliptical galaxy combining together. NGC1365 is a good example of a barred spiral galaxy.	Mars has a thin atmosphere and Mars has no surface water. Mars has a complex surface with features such as volcanoes, canyons, dust storms, channels an impact craters. Many of these features are the largest yet discovered in the solar system. Some, such as mud-flow-ejecta blankets and chaotic terrain, have only been found on Mars. Olympus Mons on Mars is the largest volcanic mountain in the Solar System. It is 600 km across and 27 km high! And you thought Mount Everest (about 8 and a half km high) was tall!	In 1981 the U.S. Space Shuttle makes its inaugural flight. In 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes less than two minutes into its flight, killing all seven crew members and setting back NASA programs for several years. Also in 1986 the Russian Mir space station was successfully launched into orbit. In 1998 Russia and U.S. cooperate in the assembly of the first two modules of the ISS or International Space Station. Mars is the next frontier for manned space missions, but the goal of landing a man on Mars is at least a decade away.	Earth, the third planet from the Sun is, in scientific terms, quite similar to the first two. In fact, the four planets of the inner solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) all share rock and metal as their primary ingredients. Each of these so-called terrestrial planets has a solid surface, unlike the gaseous planets of the outer solar system. The diameter of the Earth is 7,926 miles. The time it takes Earth to rotate is 23 hours, 56 minutes. The Earth orbits the Sun in 365.24 days.
Space / Nebulas Hubble images	Mars / NASA Bases & Spacecraft	International Space Station	Space Earth & Moon

		Above: ISS Alpha photo taken by Atlantis Feb 2001. Below: Ten still animations of future ISS look.
The Hubble Space Telescope whirls around Earth at a speed of 5 miles per second. If cars moved that fast, a coast-to-coast trip across the continental U.S. would take only10 minutes.	A top priority in NASA's exploration of Mars is understanding its present climate, what its climate was like in the distant past, and the causes of climate change over time.	High above the Earth lies the International Space Station: the first microgravity laboratory for the whole world. Orbital construction began on the International Space Station in late 1998.	The moon is approximately 234,000 miles from Earth. The moon's gravity is 1/6 that of the earth's. So if you weigh 160 pounds on earth, you would only weigh 26.6 pounds on the moon.

Engineers designed Hubble with servicing in mind. The telescope is equipped with 31 foot restraints and 225 ft. of handrails			There are various theories about how the Moon was created, but recent evidence indicates it formed when a huge collision tore a chunk of the Earth away.
The tool chest astronauts use during servicing missions contains more than 100 tools, including common screwdrivers and wrenches. When a component breaks or a more technologically advanced instrument becomes available, astronauts install the new equipment using hand and power tools during periodic servicing missions. By the time Hubble's mission ends in 2005, astronauts will have serviced it four times-1993, 1997, 1999 and 2002-and have installed many new instruments featuring more advanced technology.	A better understanding of Mars' current climate will help scientists more effectively model its past climatic behavior. To do that, NASA will need detailed weather maps of the planet and information about how much dust and water vapor are in the atmosphere. Monitoring the planet for this information over one full Martian year (687 Earth days) will help NASA understand how Mars behaves over its seasonal cycle and guide us toward understanding how the planet changes over millions of years.	By 2004, the Space Shuttle and Russian rockets will conduct 45 missions, assembling the more than 100 pieces of the 460-ton ISS. When completed, the ISS will house up to seven astronauts in a conglomeration of modules as big as two football fields on the outside with a habitable area the size of a 747 jumbo jet. The astronauts will perform wide-ranging science experiments, from studying how to grow food in space to observing the effects of weightlessness on bone and muscle loss, sleep disorders and hypertension.	The Moon travels around the Earth at a little more than half a mile per second; its speed is slowing and the satellite is gradually moving away from Earth. Our moon is moving away from the earth at about 3cm per year. Because it takes 27.3 days both to rotate on its axis and to orbit Earth, the Moon always shows us the same face. We see the Moon because of reflected sunlight. How much of we see depends on its position in relation to Earth and the Sun. In June of 1999, researchers discovered by accident that a huge cloud of sodium gas trails behind the Moon.


Pointing the Hubble Space Telescope and locking onto distant celestial targets is like holding a laser light steady on a dime that is 400 miles away. Each day, the Hubble Space Telescope collects enough data to fill an encyclopedia. Images and data collected by the telescope travel 90,000 miles over satellite and ground links before they reach the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.	The layered terrain of the Martian polar regions also holds clues about the planet's past, much like the rings of a tree provide a record of its history. When and how were these polar layers deposited? Was the climate of Mars ever like that of Earth? And if so, what happened to change the planet into the dry, cold, barren desert it is today? Those are the questions that NASA missions still have to answer.	In an historic space maneuver, astronauts used the Space Shuttle Endeavor's 50-foot robotic Canada Arm on Dec. 7, 1998, to connect the first two pieces of the International Space Station. The crew of six snagged the Russian Zarya module from space and attached it to the Unity connecting module. The cost of building and maintaining the ISS for the first decade is expected to exceed $100 billion.	Like the four inner planets, the Moon is rocky. It's pockmarked with craters formed by asteroid impacts millions of years ago. Because there is no weather, the craters have not eroded. The Moon has almost no atmosphere, so a layer of dust -- or a footprint -- can sit undisturbed for centuries. And without an atmosphere, heat is not held near the planet, so temperatures vary wildly.
			Daytime temperatures on the sunny side of the Moon reach 273 degrees F; on the dark side it gets as cold as -243.
			Asteroids & Comets

Placed into a low-earth orbit in April 1990 by the space shuttle, the 2.4-meter Hubble Space Telescope has since returned some remarkable images in the visible, near-ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths. Some of the Hubble Nebula images are on this page. The Hubble Space Telescope is more than 13 meters (43 feet) long and 4 meters (14 feet) wide-about the size of a bus or tanker truck. Standing upright, it looks like a 5-story tower.	The current Martian climate is regulated by seasonal changes of the carbon dioxide ice caps, the movement of large amounts of dust by the atmosphere and the exchange of water vapor between the surface and the atmosphere. One of the most dynamic weather patterns on Mars is the generation of dust storms that generally occur in the southern spring and summer. These storms can grow to encompass the whole planet.	The ISS by the numbers: -Length, end-to-end: 361 feet. -Area covered by solar arrays: half an acre. -Length of batteries lined up end-to-end: 2,900 feet. -Windows with view of Earth: 4 -Miles of wire: 8. -Onboard computers: 52. -Lines of code in the software: 1.7 million.	There are two hypotheses about how most of the asteroids formed. One says they broke off of a mother planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter. More likely, however, they represent what space was like before the planets formed, and they are the remnants of that process -- bits and pieces that never quite joined together. When an asteroid, or a part of it, crashes into Earth, it is called a meteorite.


A Supernova is a massive and bright star that has lost most of its mass in a tremendous explosion. A Supernova explosion produces more energy in its first ten seconds than the Sun during the whole of its 10 billion year lifetime and that for a brief period, it creates more energy than the rest of a galaxy put together. Almost all of the heavier elements in your body (eg calcium, iron, carbon) were made somewhere in Supernova explosions.	Mars has two small moons: Phobos and Deimos. Phobos (fear) and Deimos (panic) were named after the horses that pulled the chariot of the Greek war god Ares, the counterpart to the Roman war god Mars. Both Phobos and Deimos were discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall. The moons appear to have surface materials similar to many asteroids in the outer asteroid belt, which leads most scientists to believe that Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids.	The energy in the sunlight we see today started out in the core of the Sun 30,000 years ago - it spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun. The Sun makes up 99.86% of the Solar System's mass. That means that all the planets put together (including Jupiter) as well as all the asteroids only make up about 0.14% of the Solar System's mass.	Since the Earth was formed asteroids and comets have routinely slammed into the planet. Comets are made of ice, dust, and gases and are known for their tails. The comet with the longest recorded tail is the Great Comet of 1843. Its tail stretched over 800 million kilometers! A massive body 100 km wide traveling at over 512,000 km/h crashed into Mercury to form the Caloris Basin. The impact was so great it sent shockwaves round Mercury creating its hilly lineated terrain.
			Great Blue Marble is located at the center of this Earth image. Center is Calgary, Canada.
A nebula is an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, which is sometimes made visible by the reflected light from nearby stars. Nebulae are the birthplace of stars.
The pillar-like structures of Nebulas are columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust, pre-stages of new stars that protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud.	Some rocks found on Earth are actually pieces of Mars. Most Mars rocks have been located in Antarctica, where the surface landscape rarely changes.	Russian Mir Space Station 1986 - 2001	Earth & Moon Viewer Do you want to see your country from space?
			Click on " Earth & Moon Viewer" to see Earth from space.
		The Russian Mir space station was launched in 1986, and was successfully returned to Earth in 2001 with a controlled crash in a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean.	Click on " Earth & Moon Viewer" to see Earth from space.