Portal:Space

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
The Space Portal


  Main     Featured content     Things you can do     Topics  

Template:/box-header

Astronaut-EVA.jpg

Space (or outer space) describes the vast empty regions between and around planets and stars. The study of these, and other, astronomical objects is called astronomy, one of the oldest sciences. It is often said that space exploration began with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. Then, in an almost unbelievable feat of human achievement, in 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin travelled to the Moon and set foot on the surface during the Apollo 11 mission. Recently, it has become clear that the possibility of space colonization may no longer be exclusively reserved for science-fiction stories, and many controversial issues surrounding space have come to light, including commercial spaceflight, space laws and space weapons.

Template:/box-footer

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.

The high-resolution Voyager 2 image of Titania taken on January 24, 1986

Titania is the largest of the moons of Uranus and the eighth largest moon in the Solar System. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, Titania is named after the queen of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies inside Uranus' magnetosphere. Titania consists of approximately equal amounts of ice and rock, and is likely differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. A layer of liquid water may be present at the core–mantle boundary. The surface of Titania, which is relatively dark and slightly red in color, appears to have been shaped by both impacts and endogenic processes. It is covered by numerous impact craters reaching 326 km in diameter, but is less heavily cratered than the surface of Uranus' outermost moon, Oberon. Titania probably underwent an early endogenic resurfacing event that obliterated its older, heavily cratered surface. Like all major moons of Uranus, Titania probably formed from an accretion disk that surrounded the planet just after its formation. As of 2013, the Uranian system has been studied up close only once: by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in January 1986. It took several images of Titania, which allowed mapping of about 40% of the moon’s surface.

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.

STS-116 spacewalk
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.

Template:/box-header Portal:Astronomy/Events/March 2024

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.

Crab Nebula.jpg
55x55px
Jupiter by Cassini-Huygens.jpg
Mars Hubble.jpg
Moon-Mdf-2005.jpg
Nuvola apps kalzium.svg
Astronomy European Space Agency Jupiter Mars Moon Science
Solar system.jpg
RocketSunIcon.svg
55x55px
Ilc 9yr moll4096.png
Uranus2.jpg
Chandra X-ray Observatory.jpg
Solar System Spaceflight Star Cosmology Uranus X-ray astronomy
Purge server cache