It will shrink to around the same size as Earth, but it will weigh 20,000 times more.Ĭlick the above image to expand it. A few billion years after that, it will become a small white dwarf star. In another 5 billion years the Sun will become a big, cool star called a red giant. Right now, our Sun is in a stage called yellow dwarf. The Sun is also right in the middle of its lifecycle. Astronomers have found some stars that are 100 times bigger than the Sun and others that are 10 times smaller. Our Sun is about 100 times wider than Earth, but it is just an average sized star. And the Sun’s core is the hottest part of all, at a sizzling 27 million degrees Fahrenheit! The Sun’s surface is very hot, and its atmosphere is even hotter. If we were too close, it would be way too hot to live here. However, it’s a good thing that Earth isn’t too close to the Sun. That’s 400 times farther than the distance between Earth and the Moon! It’s approximately 93 million miles away from Earth. Just how close is the Sun to Earth? Way, way closer than other stars, but still pretty far away. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD) With this knowledge, NASA is enabling safe and effective human missions to destinations beyond low Earth orbit.Explore the Sun! Click and drag to rotate the Sun. In searching for evidence of life beyond Earth, scientists use these data to map zones of habitability, studying the chemistry of unfamiliar worlds, and unveiling the processes that lead to conditions necessary for life. NASA’s robotic explorers gather data to help scientists understand how the planets formed, what triggered different evolutionary paths among planets, what processes have occurred and are active, and how Earth among the planets became habitable. These telescopes and sensors are used to survey the volume of near-Earth space to detect, track, catalog, and characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs), which may pose hazards to Earth or provide destinations and resources for future exploration, and to investigate our exoplanet counterparts through comparative planetology. Closer to home, the Planetary Science Division uses Earth-orbiting telescopes and ground-based sensors in coordination with other organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the U.S. We have orbited and traversed the surface of Mars, finding evidence of liquid water and ancient habitable environments. NASA missions continue to explore from the innermost planet, Mercury, to the outer reaches of the Solar System, where Pluto orbits among many Kuiper Belt Objects. NASA’s Planetary Science missions continue to revolutionize our understanding of the origin and history of the Solar System. In the future, humans will return to the Moon, Mars, and possibly other solar system bodies to explore them, after they have been investigated and understood using robotic missions. Using the decadal recommendations as our guide, planetary science missions and research inform us about our neighborhood and our own origin and evolution, and they are necessary precursors to the expansion of humanity beyond Earth. The scientific foundation for this enterprise is described in the NRC planetary science decadal survey, Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022 (NRC, 2011). To date, NASA spacecraft have visited every planet as well as a variety of small bodies and some of our current missions will bring back new samples from exciting destinations, allowing iterative detailed study and analysis back on Earth. įor decades, NASA’s planetary science program has advanced the scientific understanding of the solar system in extraordinary ways, while pushing the limits of spacecraft and robotic engineering design and operations. Download the Planetary Science Division fleet chart, dated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |