Lucifer is the name of various mythological and religious figures associated with the planet Venus. Due to the unique movements and discontinuous appearances of Venus in the sky, mythology surrounding these figures often involved a fall from the heavens to earth or the underworld.

William Tyndale

Venus

Earth has a number of nicknames, including the Blue Planet, Gaia, Terra, and “the world” – which reflects its centrality to the creation stories of every single human culture that has ever existed. But the most remarkable thing about our planet is its diversity.

Venus is very similar to Earth in size and mass – and so is sometimes referred to as Earth’s sister planet – but Venus has a quite different climate. Venus’ thick clouds and closeness to the Sun (only Mercury is closer) make it the hottest planet – much hotter than the Earth.

Unlike the Earth’s atmosphere, which is mainly composed of nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%), Venus’ atmosphere contains about 96% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, some argon and traces of water vapour (varying from 0.1 to 0.4%), oxygen, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, and carbon …

Six Things That Make Life on Earth Possible. Earth is well equipped as a planet and ideally placed in our solar system and galaxy to support life as we know it. The product of some 4.6 billion years of cosmic construction, our planet is flush with life thanks to a fortuitous set of conditions.

Gilbert Levin, who was the principal investigator for the Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment for both landers, still maintains that Viking really did discover life in the red sands of Mars after all. On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars. Amazingly, they were positive.

The Viking mission was planned to continue for 90 days after landing. Each orbiter and lander operated far beyond its design lifetime. Viking Orbiter 1 continued for four years and 1,489 orbits of Mars, concluding its mission August 7, 1980, while Viking Orbiter 2 functioned until July 25, 1978.

Mars One initially estimated a one-way trip, excluding the cost of maintaining four astronauts on Mars until they die, at US$6 billion….Donations and merchandise.

The only humans known to have died of exposure to vacuum in space are the three crew-members of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft; Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski, and Viktor Patsayev.

The Outer Space Treaty means therefore that – no matter whose national flags are planted on the lunar surface – no nation can ‘own’ the Moon. As of 2019, 109 nations are bound by the Treaty, and another 23 have signed the agreement but have yet to be officially recognised.

3,000 dead

It only has to travel about 6,700 miles per hour to overcome gravity and stay in orbit. Satellites can stay in an orbit for hundreds of years like this, so we don’t have to worry about them falling down to Earth. Phew! Find out more about our home planet at NOAA SciJinks.

The International Space Station just discarded 2.9 tons of old batteries — the largest piece of space debris to be dropped from the space station to date. Engineers in Houston used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to drop the pallet of nickel-hydrogen batteries from the space station’s orbit, 260 miles above Earth.

There is no one responsible for tracking it internationally, but the United States does track space debris to protect our own satellites, and we share some of that information with the rest of the world. Other nations also have tracking capabilities and perform similar services for their satellites.