Category: Astronomy
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Which planet has more than double the mass of all the other planets combined?
Jupiter is the fifth planet from our Sun and is, by far, the largest planet in the solar system – more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. Jupiter’s stripes and swirls are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter’s iconic Great…
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Who was the first woman in space?
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova born 6 March 1937) is a member of the Russian State Duma, engineer, and former cosmonaut. She is the first and youngest woman to have flown in space with a solo mission on the Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, and to date remains the only woman…
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In which Space shuttle Kalpana Chawla died?
An American commercial cargo spacecraft bound for the International Space Station has been named after fallen NASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla, the first India-born woman to enter space, for her key contributions to human spaceflight. Northrop Grumman, an American global aerospace and defence technology company, announced that its next Cygnus capsule will be named the “S.S.…
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Which American space program brought lunar rocks from the Moon?
Apollo was the NASA program that resulted in American astronauts’ making a total of 11 spaceflights and walking on the moon. The first four flights tested the equipment used in the Apollo Program. Six of the other seven flights landed on the moon. The first Apollo flight happened in 1968. The first moon landing took…
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What is Hayabusa spacecraft?
Hayabusa was a Japanese spacecraft that brought back a sample of asteroid material to Earth in 2010, after a mission riddled with technical glitches. The spacecraft touched down on a small near-Earth asteroid called 25143 Itokawa and safely brought back minute rocky particles for analysis. The success of the mission inspired a successor spacecraft, called…
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Who holds the record for the most spacewalks by a woman?
Peggy Annette Whitson (born February 9, 1960) is an American biochemistry researcher, retired NASA astronaut, and former NASA Chief Astronaut. Her first space mission was in 2002, with an extended stay aboard the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 5. Her second mission launched October 10, 2007, as the first female commander of the ISS with Expedition 16. She was on her third long-duration…
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Which is a small natural satellite orbiting a planet and a dwarf planet?
Moons — also called natural satellites — come in many shapes, sizes and types. They are generally solid bodies, and few have atmospheres. Most planetary moons probably formed from the discs of gas and dust circulating around planets in the early solar system. There are hundreds of moons in our solar system — even a…
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Which is first known interstellar object to visit the solar system in 2017?
The first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, was discovered Oct. 19, 2017 by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope, funded by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations (NEOO) Program, which finds and tracks asteroids and comets in Earth’s neighborhood. The first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system, this interstellar…
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Which is the brightest nebula in the sky and occupy an area twice the diameter of the full Moon?
The Orion Nebula, the brightest nebula in the sky and occupying an area twice the diameter of the full Moon, can be viewed with the naked eye but was missed by early astronomers. The Orion Nebula’s position in our galaxy is well-known. If we could view the Milky Way from above, it would appear as a…
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Which is the Milky Way’s central black hole?
At the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole in the region known as Sagittarius A. It has a mass of about 4 million times that of our Sun. Almost every galaxy, including our Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its heart, with masses of millions to billions of times the…