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Weightlessness

If you need something uplifting, try a good few minutes in zero gravity. The environment will make you feel weightless, and while floating, you can move around without much effort at all.

International Space Station

The International Space Station was a joint effort that began in the late '90s, bringing together the Russians and the Americans to build up the station brick by brick. The astronauts aboard the ISS do experiments, while also noting microgravity's effects on the human body.

Voyager 1

Voyager 1's main mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, which it did, photographing the volcanoes of Jupiter's moons and the rings of Saturn. But not only did the spacecraft photograph the whole solar system, afterward, it entered interstellar space in 2012, becoming the first to cross that threshold.

Comet

The nucleus of a comet is actually a frozen chunk of icy gases, mixed in with rocks and dust. When heated up by the Sun, a comet forms two tails that stretch for sometimes millions of miles as gas and dust spew from it.

Saturn

Even though Saturn is huge, it's super buoyant. The lightest planet in our solar system is comprised mainly of gas, so much so that it could float in water. We're gonna need a bigger tub!

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Meaning "National Aeronautics and Space Administration," NASA was founded in 1958. With an initial goal to reach the Moon, the independent agency has since explored the world outside our planet.

The Moon and Mars

We've only explored about five percent of the Earth's oceans. The surfaces of Mars and the Moon, on the other hand, have each been mapped out 100 percent.

Space Junk

As it turns out, we're littering both our Earth <i>and</i> outer space with junk. There are an estimated 500,000+ pieces of space junk orbiting Earth, from rockets to satellites to construction tools that were accidentally dropped into zero gravity.

The Earth is moving through the debris of an asteroid/comet

As the Earth revolves around the Sun, sometimes it's met with comet or asteroid debris. This results in a meteor shower, as the debris makes contact with Earth's atmosphere.

1,000 hours

To qualify for NASA, you must have logged either three years in your professional STEM field or 1,000 hours as pilot-in-command in a jet aircraft. The latter sounds a lot more fun.

Meteoroids burning up in the Earth's atmosphere

Don't actually put that falling star in your pocket – because it's a meteoroid (bit of rock and/or dust) burning up upon entry into Earth's atmosphere. It's bound to burn a hole straight through your Levis.

A star exploding

See that stellar explosion in the night sky? That's a supernova. The event occurs when a giant star is in its final evolutionary stages or when nuclear fusion impacts a white dwarf.

Mars

The Red Planet is red for a reason. Iron oxide – aka, rust – covers Mars's surface.

Challenger

In 1986, NASA's 25th mission lasted little over a minute, when a malfunctioning rocket booster on the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated, resulting in the deaths of all on board. The intended goals of the mission were to track satellites and observe Halley's Comet. The seven astronauts on board included a teacher who intended to bring space into the classrooms after the mission.

Neptune

Neptune is far out, man. At 2.78 billion miles from the Sun, it gets chilly out there in space. We're talking -366.6 °F chilly.

Neptune

Neptune is taking things slow. As one of the farthest planets from the Sun, it travels around its orbit in 165 Earth years. With an orbital speed of just 3.37 miles per second, the rest of the planets are leaving Neptune in the dust.

Apollo 13

56 hours into its mission in 1970, Apollo 13 hit a snag. An explosion in the aircraft, coupled with broken oxygen tanks, required the air and ground crews to work together to get the team home safe. Luckily, they were successful.

Mars

With a valley ten times the length of the Grand Canyon, Mars has some magnificent geological features to explore. The 2,500-mile-long Valles Marineris was discovered by Mariner 9 in 1971.

Saturn

The inner planets have the closest orbits to the Sun. That's, in order, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are all located within the asteroid belt.

Venus

The brightness of Venus comes from its sulfuric acid clouds. The yellow reflects the sunlight so brightly that you can see Venus from Earth at times with the naked eye.

Polaris

The North Star is known as Polaris, but it may not always be pointing us due North. Earth's axis changes ever so slightly, and in time, Vega will be the new North Star. It's believed that Polaris was not the North Star in 3,000 BC; the honor went to Thuban (aka Alpha Draconis).

Jupiter

The force is strong with this one. Jupiter's gravitational pull is stronger than any other planet in our solar system. It's so strong that asteroids love it.

Voyager 2

Voyager 2 is far out, man. Literally. After investigating the far corners of our solar system, the spacecraft has made it upwards of twice as far away as Pluto.

Mars

Martian rocks have been found on planet Earth...and no one knows how they got here. Scientists have their theories, of course. Some think that an asteroid slammed into Mars or a volcanic explosion caused these rocks to spew across 156.62 million miles to their neighbor.

Saturn

One of Saturn's many moons, Iapetus, is a two-toned gem. One side has an extremely dark hemisphere, while the other is light. You can find this contrast nowhere else in the solar system, and scientists theorize that another darker moon (Phoebe) may be shedding some particles onto its surface. Others think it could be thermal segregation.

The Earth's atmosphere

You have Earth's atmosphere to thank for that twinkle as, without its refraction, we would not perceive this visual effect. Planets don't twinkle, because they're much larger to our eyes, and the light that zig-zags cancels out, resulting in a clear glow.

Mars

Mars features a volcano that's three times the height of Mount Everest and about the size of Arizona in surface area, about 374,015 ft². Known as Olympus Mons, you'll need to train on Everest to reach this 16-mile-high peak.

A storm

Jupiter's Red Spot is a storm so big that, at one point, three Earths could have fit in it. That storm has been shrinking in width over decades and now it's only the size of a single Earth.

Saturn

Saturn's small moon, Enceladus, is so icy that it reflects ninety percent of the sunlight that hits it. Due to its lack of absorbance of sunlight, the planet can get brutally cold – down to -394° Fahrenheit.

Between Mars and Jupiter

The main asteroid belt is positioned between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Like a doughnut-shaped ring, the belt is studded with hundreds of thousands – and maybe even millions – of asteroids.

Uranus

Uranus is tilted on its side for unknown reasons. Scientists theorize that a giant collision may have knocked Uranus off its...erm...feet in the past.

Neutron star

Neutron stars must be dizzy. Because they are born of an explosion, their physics causes them to spin at top speeds, rotating sometimes more than 600 times per second.

Venus

Four of our Solar System's planets are much bigger – and gassier – than the others. Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter are known as "gas giants," because they are mostly made up of gases, particularly hydrogen and helium.

Master's degree in S.T.E.M.

While a bachelor's degree once sufficed to qualify to be a NASA astronaut, today you need a master's in S.T.E.M. A S.T.E.M. field could be anything from mathematics to engineering to physical science.

A black hole

Gravitational redshift results from a star coming too near a black hole and being torn to shreds. This causes the star's light to dim and lose its energy, as it's pulled into the black hole's extreme gravity.

Earth

You've got your God of War (Mars) and your Goddess of Love (Venus), but Earth is not a god at all. It's the only planet not named after a Roman or Greek god. Its name comes from a combination of Old English and Old Germanic, meaning "ground".

Spiral galaxy

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that looks like a pinwheel spinning when viewed from above or below. The galaxy's center is about 25,000 lightyears away from the Sun, which is situated on one of its spiral arms.

Pluto

Once the ninth planet, Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet. But that doesn't mean Pluto doesn't bring its A-game. Its ice mountains grow 11,000 feet high, but we're still not sure where the planet got the energy for geological activity.

Meteorite

When meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere and survive the entire journey to Earth's surface, they're known as meteorites. The force of impact and heat they undergo alters their chemistry and structure. Those that don't survive the journey are known as meteors.

Johnson Space Station

"Houston, we have a problem." The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, will be your home away from home during astronaut training.

Metal and sulphuric acid

It's not a "White Christmas" on Venus. When it rains, it pours sulphuric acid. And when it snows, it snows metal. The scorching hot planet melts its metals which become gas and then liquid in its atmosphere, only to rain it down where it freezes with the polar cold temperatures, solidifying again.

Mercury and Venus

With 176 moons in our solar system and counting, it's surprising that two planets go without. But Mercury and Venus have no time for moons. In fact, some moons are even bigger than the planet Mercury itself.

Spirit and Opportunity

Although they were only intended to stay for three months on the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity ended up roving around Mars for more than a decade. They explored the planet's surface, poking and prodding to discover more about Earth's closest neighbor. Spirit lost its spirit in 2010, while Opportunity found an opportunity out in 2018 when Mars was hit by a dust storm.

Kepler Mission

In 2009, Kepler was launched with one mission in mind: to "explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems". K1 returned to Earth in 2013, and K2 continued its mission shortly after. The original had already discovered 1,284 exoplanets, nine of which were in a "habitable zone".

Oort Cloud

Located about 300 billion miles from the Sun, the Oort Cloud is comprised of icy bodies that form a spherical shell around the Sun and its orbiting planets. The bubble-like cloud won't be reached by Voyager 1 for around 300 years yet, so we're waiting to learn more.

2061

The last time we Earthlings saw Halley’s Comet was in February of 1986. Being as the comet swings past every 75 years or so, we'll next see her in July of 2061.

Mercury

Imagine having a day so hot that it reaches 800° F and a night so chilly that it dips down to -280° F. That's a day on Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun.

Buzz Lightyear

"To Infinity and Beyond!" Buzz Lightyear was an apt choice of toy to spend over a year aboard the International Space Station. He returned to Earth in 2009.

Helium and Hydrogen

Earth is the only planet with a substantial variation and volume of different elements, from iron to oxygen to sulfur and aluminum. No other planet has the abundance of these elements, although they can all be found in trace amounts. Helium and hydrogen make up the elemental majority on other planets, while Earth is made up of ninety percent oxygen, iron, magnesium, and silicon.

Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11

Before there were the Voyagers, there were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. The two spacecrafts were launched in the early '70s with the aim to explore Saturn and Jupiter. Photos of the Great Red Spot were among the mission's findings.

90 seconds

Astronauts are trained to hold their breath for ninety seconds without losing consciousness. This is in the event of the temporary loss of oxygen in the shuttle or any other circumstance where they must be able to keep their wits about them.

Methane

The beautiful sapphire blue that makes up Uranus’s atmospheric glow is due to the methane gas in its atmosphere. This gas filters the red and reflects the blue light from the Sun.

The Sun

While it may look like only a sphere in the sky, the Sun is literally massive, taking up 99.86% of the mass in our solar system. With hydrogen and helium making up its composition, it's 330,000 times larger than Earth.

Mars Pathfinder

The Mars Pathfinder mission sent the Sojourner rover to the Red Planet in the late '90s, where it became the first to explore another planet and measure and analyze the climate, its atmosphere, and its geology. The rover uncovered evidence that there may have once been water on Mars...meaning there may have been life there too.

Earth

Chock full of size and mass, Earth is the densest planet, at 5.514 g/cm3. The core of the planet is made of nickel and iron. The other planets are so gassy that their size just can't compete.

Apollo 11

Apollo 11 famously became the first time man set foot on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong taking that "one small step" on July 20, 1969. Since then, six missions have landed men on the Moon, with Apollo 17 in 1972 being the final manned mission there.

Whirlpool Galaxy

The Whirlpool Galaxy wields spiraling arms made of stars, gas, and space dust. The arms create new stars, as they compress hydrogen gas.

Jupiter

Did you know that Jupiter has an ocean? It does – but it's not filled with H₂O. The metallic hydrogen in Jupiter's ocean is in liquid form, due to high pressure from the planet's chemical composition and mass. At 25,000 miles deep, Jupiter's ocean is nearly as deep as the Earth's circumference.

Mariner 10

In 1974, Mariner 10 became the first spacecraft to visit the smallest planet in our solar system. The spacecraft entered Mercury's orbit and photographed nearly half of its surface. It wasn't until 2013 that Mercury was completely mapped by Messenger.

2 years

Those applicants who are approved for training are known as "Astronaut Candidates," and there's a long vetting process before they can truly call themselves astronauts. These candidates are trained and evaluated over a two-year period.

Triton

Triton, one of Neptune's weirdest moons, runs super cold – averaging -391° F, to be exact. That makes it the coldest known object in our Solar System. It also has a retrograde orbit and is the only large moon to move backward.

Kuiper Belt

Located beyond Neptune, the Kuiper Belt isn't a fashion statement; it's a ring of icy celestial bodies. Our old friend and demoted ninth planet, Pluto, lives there.

Neptune

Neptune gives off more heat than it receives, and why it does this is a mystery. Being that it's so far away from the Sun, the fact that it's generating 2.6 times more energy than it absorbs is baffling.

55 Cancri e

"Lucy in the sky with diamonds..." or so the theme song of 55 Cancri e goes. The "super earth" planet is double the size of our Earth and is said to be covered in diamond and graphite. What a goldmine!

Planets that orbit around stars other than our Sun

The Sun is a star with planets orbiting it. And, as it turns out, other stars in our solar system also have planets orbiting them. These are called exoplanets, and NASA has uncovered thousands of them since Kepler launched in 2009.

3,000

Astronauts aren't just jaunting to the Moon and back for no reason; they're doing experiments up there. Many of these experiments are testing how microgravity works on various things – including themselves!

600 miles in diameter

While <i>Armageddon</i>'s comet was a mere seven miles in diameter, the largest asteroid comes in at a whopping 600 miles in diameter. Ceres, which is simultaneously considered a dwarf planet and an asteroid by the International Astronomical Union, is as big as India by surface area.

Io

A dwarf planet has three main qualifications: it orbits the Sun, is nearly round due to its mass, is not a moon, and has not "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit". Pluto was once one of the nine planets in our solar system, but he got demoted to dwarf planet in 2006. The five others include Ceres, Eris, Makemake, Haumea, and most recently, RR245.