Nashtronaut Questions & Answers

I live near the city. Why can't I see all the stars at night?

This is something called light pollution, and it's a growing problem near almost every city. It's caused by light from streetlights, billboards, building lights and more. Many of these spill excess light up into the sky. That light bounces off the atmosphere, back into our eyes, and drowns out many of the fainter stars that we could see if the lights were off. Even miles from the city, the collected glow of all those lights interferes with our view.

Of course we could just turn off all the lights, but that wouldn't make very many people happy, because we do need lights at night so we can see things! The real problem is that many of these outdoor lights don't just shine on the ground. A lot of the light shines up, where we don't even need it. Look at a billboard at night. There's a good chance that the lighting fixture is at the bottom, shining up at the sign. A lot of that light completely misses the sign, shining into the sky. If the light were more carefully controlled, the billboard would still be useful without contributing to light pollution.

Fortunately there are lighting fixtures available that direct light only where it's needed. Another benefit of these lighting fixtures is that they're more energy efficient. Light that spills up into the sky doesn't just annoy astronomers, it's a big waste of electricity, too. Cutting down on that waste saves money!

How many years would it take you to go around the Solar System at 500 miles per hour? 

It depends on how big you think the Solar System is! Let's say you decide to go around the orbit of Pluto, which averages about 3.6 billion miles from the Sun. If you traveled in a big circle, keeping that same distance from the Sun, the trip would be over 37 billion miles.  At 500 miles per hour it would take over 5,200 years to circle the Sun just once. Pluto itself takes just 248 years to circle the Sun just once, which means it's traveling more than 10,500 miles per hour!

What if you just took a trip around Earth's orbit? Earth takes one year to travel around the Sun, and it does it at a speed of over 66,000 miles per hour. If you were only going 500 miles per hour, it would take 133 years to go around the Sun at Earth's distance.

Whether you call it a planet or not, Pluto is not really the most distant object in the Solar System. There are lots of objects out there beyond Pluto, and it would take even longer to circle around them!

Has an astronaut ever died from being too close to the sun?

Nope! No astronaut has even gone anywhere near the Sun. The farthest any astronaut has traveled from the Earth is the Moon, which is about 250,000 miles away. The Sun is much further away: 93 million miles from Earth!

Astronauts still have to be careful, though. Earth's atmosphere blocks out a lot of the Sun's harmful effects, but in space astronauts are exposed to dangerous solar radiation. Scientists and engineers are working on better ways to detect and block the radiation, keeping astronauts safer.

What are you using to create the simulated micro-gravity conditions in your brand new space exhibit?

If you're wondering how we managed to turn off the gravity in our exhibit... well, we can't really do that. The force of gravity is always there, and there is no way to turn it off. We can do some tricks, though, to simulate the environment of space.

On the Moon, you weigh one-sixth what you do on Earth. That's because the Moon's gravity isn't as strong. You can jump higher on the Moon, and it will take you longer to fall back to the ground. In our Moonwalk exhibit, you'll put on a harness like a parachutist might wear, and we'll counterbalance you with just enough weight so that you can bounce as high as you would on the Moon.

Meanwhile, on the EVA Experience, you'll be perfectly counterbalanced so that you can imagine yourself on a spacewalk outside a space station orbiting the Earth. You can hang perfectly still in midair, or fly up or down with just a little push in the right direction. It's fun, but it also presents a challenge if you're trying to perform repairs on the space station: how can you stay still?

We have a few other tricks up our sleeve for demonstrating micro-gravity. Be sure to visit us to learn more!