When Space Invaders was created, Tomohiro Nishikado left the lag caused by more invaders on the screen to create greater difficulty in the games.
100 Mind-Blowing Space Facts
Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, which drew more visitors to see the space than the actual painting.
There is a geocache on the International Space Station placed in 2008. It has since been visited four times by other astronauts.
The first game to be played in space was Starcraft – Daniel Barry took it with him in 1999 on the Space Shuttle mission STS-96.
After a Muslim astronaut had trouble figuring out how to fast for Ramadan in space, a booklet was written to explain how to observe Ramadan while in orbit.
NASA stands for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
Fruit flies were the first living creatures to be sent into space in 1947.
There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach in the world.
Coca-Cola was the first drink that was ever consumed in space.
In 1993, Aleksandr A. Serebrov took his Game Boy to space. Later, it was auctioned for $1,220 and is said to have orbited Earth 3,000 times.
In 2000 the first permanent crew inhabited the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, there’s always been a human presence in space.
Our solar system has a wall. The heliopause – the region of space in which solar wind isn’t hot enough to push back the wind of particles coming from distant stars – is often considered the “boundary wall” of the Solar System and interstellar space.
You can yo-yo in space. In 2012, NASA astronaut Don Pettit took a yo-yo on board the International Space Station and demonstrated several tricks. It works because a yo-yo mainly relies on the laws of conservation of angular momentum to perform tricks, which, provided you keep the string taut, apply in microgravity too.
The first animals to travel to outer space were fruit flies.
Kennedy Space Centre, dubbed Florida’s Space Coast, is the only travel destination with a beach that doubles as a launch pad. Artemis 3 is currently planning a lunar landing mission to put the first woman and person of colour on the moon, with an estimated launch date in 2025.
Thanks to 3D printing, NASA can email tools to astronauts. Getting new equipment to the Space Station used to take months or years, but the new technology means the tools are ready within hours.
An espresso maker was sent into space in 2015. Coffee lovers will appreciate this interesting space fact: Samantha Cristoforetti was the first astronaut to get a warm and cosy piece of home sent to her while in orbit. The Italian Space Agency worked with Italian coffee manufacturer Lavazza to get the coffee capsules into space.
The inventor of the Internet regrets the URL setup. Tim Berners-Lee, who created the main software of the World Wide Web, admitted he regrets one thing: Adding “//” after “https:” in a web address. It was standard for programming but didn’t serve any real purpose, and when looking back in 2009, he said leaving it out would have saved time and space. We guess we can forgive him.
The Eiffel Tower can be 15 cm taller during the summer, due to thermal expansion meaning the iron heats up, the particles gain kinetic energy and take up more space.
The Pokemon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are based on Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Pokemon is an RPG known for its world-building, which includes creating Pokemon inspired by animals, objects, space, and – turns out – even renowned martial artists. Generation 1’s Fighting type Pokemon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan were made as homages to the great kung fu masters.
NASA can “fax” tools to astronauts Sending equipment to the Space Station used to take months or years, but 3D printing technology now lets NASA do it in a few hours.
An espresso maker has been sent to space. When an Italian astronaut requests an espresso machine in orbit, who are we to deny her? The Italian Space Agency worked with Lavazza to create the cleverly named ISSpresso – the first espresso coffee machine designed for space. As a result, the first espresso coffee was drunk in space by Samantha Cristoforetti on May 3, 2015.
Space partly smells like diesel fuel and barbeque. This is mainly due to the amount of dying stars in our galaxy. The combustion releases a compound called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Space travel makes mice run in circles. NASA once sent 20 rodents to the International Space Station to see how the effects of space affected mice. Not long after they got there, the mice all started running in loops inside their cages. No one is exactly sure why this occurred, but researchers stated that the critters might’ve just been enjoying their time in space.
Driving to space would only take an hour. Theoretically, this is possible if you were to drive in a straight line upwards into the atmosphere at a speed of 60 mph.
A space mission confirmed that frogs can vomit. The frog puked out its entire stomach which caused its organs to dangle out of its mouth. The frog then used its forearms to dig out the stomach’s contents and swallow the organs again.
There is no sound in space. Sound normally travels by vibrations in the air. However, there are no molecules of air to vibrate in space.
NASA saw 168 errors in the space film Armageddon. The film Armageddon is so scientifically inaccurate that NASA uses it as a test for its management training program. NASA shows the film to new managers and makes them spot as many errors as possible. So far, about 168 have been found.
A meteor as strong as 10 atomic bombs exploded over Earth and everyone missed it. In 2018, a meteor 10 meters in diameter exploded over the Bering Sea. The massive space rock had a mass of 1400 tonnes and an impact energy of 173 kilotons of TNT – which was about 10 times the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
There’s an apartment inside the Eiffel Tower. When Gustave Eiffel designed the tower, he added a hidden apartment on the third level—but he never lived there, nor did anybody. Instead, Eiffel used this space to entertain guests such as Thomas Edison. Though it wasn’t big, the apartment was decorated with wallpaper, furnished with wooden cabinets, and even had a grand piano. Nowadays, you can get a peek at the unique space through a window if you ride up the tower.
Scientists detected a radio signal in space from 5 billion light-years away. 5 billion light-years mean the Earth did not exist at the time the source transmitted it! How strange.
Coca-Cola was the first soft drink consumed in space. Applesauce was the first food eaten in space by John Glenn during the Friendship 7 mission of 1962.
NASA had to rename the sizes of male astronaut peeing apparatus. Everyone knows you can’t just pee in a toilet in space, so imagine the headache when NASA had to issue peeing apparatuses. They had to change the sizing names from small-medium-large to large-gigantic-humongous because no one wanted to pick their true size.
You can’t see the Great Wall of China from space. You may have seen fact sites claiming that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure visible from space, but this is not the case. According to the Apollo astronauts, the Great Wall cannot be seen from space. However, city lights at night, roads, and the Pyramids of Giza are said to be visible.
Space refers to the expanse between the Earth and other celestial bodies.
Stars and galaxies formed from concentrated matter and other particles in space.
Dark matter comprises 90% of outer space, and no one can tell what it is or what it does.
Prolonged exposure to microgravity (lesser force of gravity in space) can cause muscular dystrophy and bone loss in humans.
Distance in space is measured in light-years.
Space is only 62 miles away.
There are 3 main types of galaxies in space: elliptical, spiral & irregular.
Humans have explored outer space more than the ocean: only 5% of the sea has been discovered.
Space smells “sulfuric,” like gunpowder or welding fumes.
Tears don’t fall in space. All “free” liquids will float in a spherical shape.
There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on a beach.
It would take only one hour to drive to space.
Tardigrades are extremely durable microscopic animals that exist all over Earth. They can survive any of the following: 300 degrees Fahrenheit (149 Celsius), -458 degrees F (-272 C), the vacuum of space, pressure six times stronger than the ocean floor, and more than a decade without food.
You could survive for a couple of minutes in a leaky spacesuit. Although films such as Total Recall show instant explosions and rapidly puffed-up spacesuits, the effects of being exposed to space are slightly less dramatic. Although it would be unpleasant, you could survive for a couple of minutes. After around 10 seconds, you would lose consciousness. The lower pressure of the vacuum would cause your blood to boil, along with other body fluids (the moisture on your tongue, for example) – but this boiling alone would not be fatal due to the pressure maintained by our blood vessels themselves. Gas bubbles would form in your bodily fluids, causing your body to swell up and bloat. The low humidity of space would cause you to cool down rapidly, and your eyes may freeze over. Within one to two minutes, the lack of oxygen would be deadly. The stress of the situation may make these symptoms worse – you would become oxygen-deprived more quickly. A rapid decompression would cause damage to your lungs, eardrums and sinuses, along with bruising and bleeding from soft tissues.
1 tsp of neutron star weighs the same as the human population. A neutron star’s density is mind-boggling. These stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons packed together in a tiny radius. Just a teaspoonful of this material would weigh over a trillion kilograms — more than the weight of the entire human population (which reaches a few hundred billion kilograms). To make something as dense as a neutron star, the whole of humanity would need to be crammed into a space the size of a sugar cube.
There are stars we will never be able to see. Ever since the Big Bang, most objects in space have been moving away from one another. The expansion of the Universe is accelerating. This is one of the facts about space that has rocked the cosmological boat over the past few years. As regions of space are whizzing away from one another at an ever-increasing rate, the first population of stars to form in the Universe are now too far away for us to ever hope of spying on them – even using the best present or future telescope. Hope is not lost; we can attempt to spot them indirectly via the energetic bursts of radiation they emit at the end of their lives.
Jupiter’s magnetic field is bigger than the Moon. The region of space in which a mass’s magnetic field dominates is known as its magnetosphere. These regions surround planets, pulsars and even our Galaxy. The planets in our Solar System have magnetospheres that interact with and are shaped by the charged particles in the wind streaming from our Sun. The largest magnetosphere in our Solar System surrounds Jupiter. Jupiter rotates very fast and has a very strong magnetic field, and its magnetosphere is filled with plasma from its volcanically active moon, Io. These features, coupled with the fact that the solar wind is slower and less dense at Jupiter than at Earth, lead to a very sizeable Jovian magnetosphere. It is easily big enough to contain a body the size of our Sun and, if visible, would be larger than the Moon in our night sky; quite an achievement considering that it is over 1,500 times farther away.
Neptune has only completed one orbit around the Sun since its discovery. This is one of our favourite facts about space, and perhaps the most memorable (if you want to impress your friends next time you’re sharing cool facts. Neptune takes a whopping 165 years to complete one full orbit around the Sun. Since it was discovered in 1846, Neptune only finished its first full post-discovery orbit in 2011. Demoted planet Pluto has yet to match this – it is not even close to completing one full, 248-year orbit since its discovery in 1930.
The Sun loses a billion kilos per second. Particles in the Sun’s upper atmosphere are so hot and energetic that they speed out into space as part of the solar wind. Our star sheds around 1.3 trillion trillion trillion particles every second. This equates to roughly one billion kilograms of matter per second, or one Earth every 185 million years.
Planets can wander through space without a parent star. Not all planets form and stay around stars: astronomers estimate that there could be more than 200 billion of them floating free and drifting through our Galaxy. These ‘rogue’ planets were thought to have been kicked out of their home systems. While this is true for some, other planets may have formed completely independently of an accretion disk (as was the case for our Solar System) instead of forming from the collapse of tiny, cold clouds known as globulettes.
Vast amounts of water have been found in space. Earth’s oceans may not be that unique. Three of Jupiter’s moons (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) and two of Saturn’s (Enceladus (pictured above) and Titan) are thought to have underwater seas. Europa’s ocean may contain over twice the volume of water found on Earth. However, the most water ever discovered surrounds a black hole some 12 billion lightyears away. This region contains vast amounts of water vapour, the equivalent of 140 trillion times the volume of water in Earth’s oceans. There is more water in space than you might think.
There is gravity on the International Space Station. Footage of astronauts on the International Space Station may give the impression of a gravity-free environment, but onboard gravity is only 10-11% weaker than it is on Earth’s surface. This particular one of our facts relates to the common belief that there’s no gravity in space. Astronauts float freely due to the Space Station’s continual state of free-fall, the same effect experienced by skydivers. The difference with the ISS is that it also has horizontal motion. As the ISS moves ‘sideways’ and falls towards Earth, the horizon curves away beneath it at the same rate, keeping the ISS in orbit and simulating a feeling of weightlessness for anyone on board.
Uranus is the coldest planet in the Solar System. Some facts about space seem to defy simple logic. Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun, so you might expect it to be the coldest planet. But it’s not: Uranus is. The question is, why is Uranus the coldest planet in the Solar System? Could Uranus’s plummeting temperature be related to the planet’s atmosphere? Did Uranus lose most of its primordial heat early in its life? Or could it be related to the planet’s strange tilt, relative to the rest of the planets that orbit our Sun?
Black holes give off light. Venture beyond the event horizon and you’ll not be able to escape the powerful gravity of a black hole. Black holes are objects so dense that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. Yet despite this, black holes can shine brightly, and this may be one of the most contradictory-sounding facts about space on our list. Supermassive black holes can illuminate the centre of galaxies and are known as active galactic nuclei. How can this be? As cosmic material falls into a black hole, it forms an accretion disc that swirls around it. This material gets very hot and glows: it can even power jets of material that shoot out of the black hole into space. This all occurs just outside the event horizon and is one of the ways astronomers can detect black holes even though they can observe them directly.
Sally Ride was the first American woman to fly in space, on June 18, 1983.
Ham the Astrochimp was the first hominid in space, launched on Jan. 31, 1961.
Sound does not carry in space.
The very first animals in space were fruit flies…they were sent up in 1947 and recovered alive.
It would only take one hour to drive to space if you could go straight up in the air.
Do you know animals are frequent passengers on rocket ships? The first living creature in space was a dog named Laika.
Earth isn’t round. While this sounds like an elaborate joke, we’re serious. Earth isn’t flat, but it’s not perfectly round either. Earth’s rotation causes the planet to bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles, while the distribution of mass on Earth (which is not perfectly uniform) causes small variations in the gravitational pull at different locations on the planet. These variations are too small to be seen in pictures of Earth from space, so they appear round to the human eye. The shape seen in the video above is not technically the shape of the planet, but its ‘geoid’, the shape of its mean sea-level surface extending around the entire globe. The map was produced using data collected from ESA’s Gravity and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) and shows the most detailed map ever created of Earth’s gravity field.
Space junk is any human-made object orbiting Earth that no longer serves a useful purpose. Scientists estimate there are about 500,000 pieces of space junk today, including fragments from rockets and satellites, and everyday items like spanners dropped during the construction of the International Space Station!
According to many astronauts, space does indeed have a smell. Many Spacewalkers describe space as smelling like “seared steak” or “hot metal.”
The space between the eyebrows is called the “glabella,” which is derived from the Latin word “glabellus,” meaning “smooth.”
If you were to remove all of the space from the atoms that make up every human on Earth, the entire world population could fit into an apple.
Jim Carrey was the first actor to star in three consecutive box-office hits. Jim Carrey didn’t have much success in the acting world until he hit his thirties, but that changed in 1994. In the space of eleven months, Carrey starred in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, And Dumb and Dumber, which truly kicked his acting career into gear. The Mask, in particular, took the world by storm, grossing $350 million and showcasing Carrey’s ability to explore a range of roles and emotions.
Only one married couple has ever been sent to space. Mark Lee and Jan Davis met during their astronaut training programs but decided to keep their relationship secret. NASA had an informal policy against sending out married couples on missions. Nine months before their mission, they got married, and by the time NASA found out it was too late to begin training replacements. Instead, they made their informal policy formal to prevent it from happening again!
Government vehicles in Cuba are legally required to pick up hitchhikers. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba went through a period of severe economic hardship called the “Special Period,” and the majority of the country’s vehicles came to a standstill. Unable to take public transport because there wasn’t enough oil or parts to maintain the buses, citizens resorted to hitchhiking. Times got so difficult that the government forced all of their vehicles with free space to pick up any hitchhikers, typically found at designated pick-up points.
99% of the human body is space.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s hard to see the Great Wall of China from space, particularly with the naked eye.
These Billion-Dollar IT Companies Started In A Garage. The tech industry is unique compared to other industries. Some of the largest names in tech originated in founders’ garages. In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen worked from their garage space to launch Microsoft. Google began as a side project of Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a garage they rented in 1998. Other companies like Apple, Amazon, and countless others began in garages as well. Perhaps there’s something about garages that spark creativity or productivity. Either way, the tech industry’s giants often come from humble beginnings. Now they’re worth billions of dollars each and counting.
Best Apple iOS Apps and Games in 2021. In the gaming category: Toca Life World (iPhone App of the Year). LumaFusion (iPad App of the Year). Craft, (Mac App of the Year). DAZN (Apple TV App of the Year). Carrot Weather (Apple Watch App of the Year). “League of Legends: Wild Rift,” (iPhone Game of the Year). “MARVEL Future Revolution,” (iPad Game of the Year). “Myst,” (Mac Game of the Year). “Space Marshals 3” (Apple TV Game of the Year). “Fantasian” (Apple Arcade Game of the Year). In the connection category: “Among Us!”, Bumble, Canva, EatOkra, Peanut.
The original Xbox had sound snippets of real space missions. The original Xbox contained edited sound bites from actual transmissions from the Apollo missions. If you left the Xbox on the home screen, eventually, you’ll hear whispers of conversation – actual chatter from the Apollo mission.
Apollo 11 astronauts couldn’t afford insurance. Life insurance for a space mission cost a fortune because the risks were extremely high back then. So instead, the astronauts of Apollo 11 signed hundreds of covers that their families could sell in case anything went wrong.
The Nintendo Game Boy went to space. In 1993, a Soviet cosmonaut brought his Nintendo Game Boy to space on the TM-17 space mission. It is said to have orbited Earth 3,000 times and was later auctioned for $1,220.
We can thank Albert Einstein for a lot of our current understanding of the physics of time. Rather than viewing time as a set order, he proved that it’s relative. For example, according to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, there’s an inverse relationship between your speed and the speed of time. The faster you move, the slower time moves. This is why someone blasting through space will age slower than the people still hanging out on Earth: Astronaut Scott Kelly was born several minutes after his twin brother, Mark, but after Scott spent 340 days living on the International Space Station, he returned to Earth around an extra 5 milliseconds younger than his “big” brother. Had Scott been travelling at a speed close to the speed of light, that age difference would have become much more pronounced.
Travelling back in time is possible—theoretically, at least. According to Einstein’s theory, you could travel back in time by moving faster than the speed of light, as long as you could somehow have infinite mass. Since that probably won’t work, you could create “wormholes” between two points in space-time. (This would also be tough since humanity still hasn’t invented the technology to build a wormhole.) Or you could try bending space-time by plucking some “cosmic strings.” Two of these theoretical strings, which are thin streams of pure energy that are moving in opposite directions at very near the speed of light, could theoretically warp space-time enough to create a closed time-like curve—also known as a time machine.
Linux is used by every major space programme in the world, including NASA and the ESA. Private space companies like SpaceX also leverage it, with the latter having completed 65 space missions (and counting) with the assistance of a fault-resistant Linux system in their powerful Falcon 9 rockets.
Talking of the wider universe, there are actual asteroids in space named after Linux and Linus Torvalds — whether space geek or tech geek, it seems we geeks like to stick together!
Linux runs on everything, from smartphones and servers to submarines and space rockets. Our list of 25 things powered by Linux highlights the most impressive uses of the versatile kernel.
The International Space Station has been running Linux since 2013.
Space programs by NASA, SpaceX, and many other space agencies rely on Linux.
NASA, SpaceX, and the ESA (European Space Agency) all use Linux for their various space programs.
Since 2013 the International Space Station also run exclusively on Linux.
There’s an asteroid floating through space officially called Asteroid 9793 Torvalds.
Linux is used in all the major space programs.
Linux on Every Major Space Station: Linux is used in every major Space Station including NASA, the International Space Station (ISS), and private space companies such as Space X. Its reliability and open-source adaptability makes it an ideal choice for critical systems, ensuring smooth operations and supporting astronauts in their endeavours beyond Earth’s boundaries.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is observed to be the most visited museum in the USA.
YouTube opened a production space in Los Angeles that is free to use – but only if you have at least 10,000 subscribers.
AI is being used in space exploration. AI is being used to analyse data from space missions and make decisions about how to proceed, potentially leading to discoveries and breakthroughs.