The idea that space begins where heaven ceases to be blue is a story for children. Decades of scientific research show that the Earth’s atmosphere It is much bigger than it was believed. Not even the 12 people who stepped on the moon abandoned at all their influence.
Where the earth ends. As Explain the expert in heliophysics From NASA, Doug Rowland, there is no clear border. “The atmosphere does not stop at Everest, or where the planes fly. It continues and continues, becoming less and less dense as you go up.”
The International Space Station, which orbits our planet about 400 kilometers high, experiences sufficient air resistance to need a periodic impulse. Otherwise, it would fall back to earth. But the real surprise came after Decades of Observations of Soho (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), a joint mission of ESA and NASA.
To the moon and beyond. A study Based on data from the Soho Observatory, he revealed that the outermost layer of our atmosphere, a faint cloud of hydrogen atoms called Geocorona, extends up to 630,000 kilometers, almost twice the distance from the earth to the moon.
When astronauts from the Apollo 16 mission installed the first telescope on the moon in 1972, they captured an image of the geocorone shining in ultraviolet light. What they didn’t know was that they were still inside her. In words of Igor Baliukinmain author of the study: “The moon flies through the atmosphere of the earth.”
Oxygen on the moon. The presence of the earth on the moon is not limited to hydrogen. Earth oxygen also arrives at our satellite. It occurs for about five days a month, when the moon passes through the Magnetocola of the Earth, the magnetic tail of our planet.
Every time it happens, Oxygen ions are accelerated to the satellite and are embedded in the lunar soil. Researchers believe that this process has occurring 2.4 billion years, which means that lunar regolite could keep a record of the evolution of our own atmosphere.
The “official” border of space. The Atmosphere is divided into layers: Trophosphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, termosfera and exosphere. The latter, the exosphere, starts about 700 kilometers high and merges with the solar wind about 10,000 kilometers. But their particles are so scarce and so scattered that they can escape towards space.
The “official” border of the space is, by convention, the line of karm, located 100 kilometers from altitude. It is considered the point at which traditional aeronautics is no longer possible due to lack of air. However, the geocorone, the luminous part of the exosphere, is the proof that the atmospheric influence of our planet comes much, much further.
Image | POT
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