“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” – Carl Sagan

WHAT IS SPACE?

The air you breathe on the surface of the planet Earth changes as you go up. High up in the atmosphere it is very rare and cold. Humans could not breathe up there and without protective clothing, would instantly freeze. At a height of 100 km the air is so rare that airplanes cannot fly and the only way you can go even higher up is by using rockets. Going up, soon you get to a point where there is no air at all and this is what we call space.

WHY DO WE PLACE SATELLITES IN ORBIT?

Even though space is vast, the most useful part of it is the lower earth orbit, it extends from 160 km to 2000 km above the surface. Since air is so thin up here, if a satellite has the right velocity, it can go around the Earth in a circle for many years. Placing satellites up here is very useful for scientists. The most important use of them is weather monitoring. With hundreds of these satellites currently in orbit, we can accurately predict the weather on Earth up to a couple of weeks ahead. They are also useful for detecting the migration of animals and sending telephone and TV signals.

WHY GO EVEN FURTHER?

The most exciting part of space starts when the atmosphere ends. Spacecraft, launched to leave the Earth can go on to study the Moon, the other planets, or entirely leave the Solar System and head for other stars. These machines are usually the most complicated and advanced pieces of technology which are built by large teams of scientists from all around the world. There are many such spacecraft in operation today studying how the Solar System works.

WHAT IS AFRICA’S ROLE IN SPACE EXPLORATION?

Africa has a few countries which have their own space programs. Nigeria has launched five satellites into space to study the spread of deserts, monitor natural disasters like wildfires and to allow communication between telephones. The Ethiopian government has committed a lot of money to the development of their space agency, as has Uganda. Besides these efforts a lot of African scientists work at the American space agency NASA and others all around the world on the most important scientific projects today.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE FOR SPACE EXPLORATION?

Space is the final frontier, which means that it is the last place that humans have not properly explored yet. After people landed on the Moon, the next step is to send a mission to Mars. This will be the first time humans will have gone to another planet in the Solar System. Besides missions with astronauts, unmanned spacecraft will continue to explore where humans cannot go yet. The most exciting of these will be a mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, which scientists believe has a very large ocean all around its surface, in search for life outside of planet Earth.