Beyond The Earth

Written by: Tamara Ebitonmor

WHAT IS SPACE?
Space is a region of capacity beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. There are many objects in space like planets, stars, moons, comets, meteors, etc. You use a telescope to see most objects in space but you can see some objects without one. E.g. moon, sun, stars etc. The galaxy we live on is the Milky Way and our planet is Earth. There are 7 other known planets namely Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

Humans have highly developed brains and just because of these, humans want to explore the unexplored and outer space is the biggest unexplored area. Right after Yuri Gagarin made the historic space flight in 1961, a race started among nations to achieve the next target – moon.

OUTER SPACE

Stars
When you look at the sky at night, you see millions of dots.These are called stars. Stars are huge balls of gas that gives out light.

 Did you know that stars are the only object in the night that continuously give out light? The sun is also a star. You might think it is quite big but it is actually quite small. Some of our bigger stars like Arcturus are one hundred times bigger than the sun. Arcturus looks smaller because it is much further away.

Planets
Other objects move at the back drop of stars. Astronomers named them “planets” which means wandering stars. Planets are not stars, rather they orbit around stars; they are made of rock and gas and do not give out light. As well as planets there are also dwarf planets which orbit the sun but are smaller than planets. Our sun is not the only star to have planets orbit them, they are other planets which are called exoplanets.

Meteors and Meteorite
Meteors are space rocks that produce streaks of light that burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Some people call these streaks of light “Shooting Stars “but they are not stars. You might see a lot of meteors in a meteor shower. Most are small and around 3000 tons. They hit earth every year as dust.

 A Meteoroid that survives the atmosphere to land on earth’s surface is called meteorite and these can form large impact craters.

LIFE ON SPACE
Living in space is not the same as living on Earth. In space, astronauts’ bodies change. On Earth, our lower body and legs carry our weight. This helps keep our bones and muscles strong. In space, astronauts float. They do not use their legs much. Their lower backs begin to lose strength. Their leg muscles do too. The bones begin to get weak and thin. This is very bad for astronauts’ bodies. So, how do astronauts help their muscles? They exercise in space every day.

REFERENCES
Cambridge Checkpoint Physics pages 52 – 62 by Helen Reynolds
Help Your Kids with Science pages 234 – 237 by Carol Voderman

Tamara Ebitonmor is an 11-year-old student of Chrisland High School Lekki. This piece is her submission for the Jordan Hill January Writing Challenge.