SpaceSpace History
The cover of the Voyager Golden Record carries a patch of electroplated uranium-238.
Whoever finds it can measure how much has decayed and calculate how long the probe has been travelling.
Source
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More space facts
Space facts are where the numbers stop making sense. A total eclipse only works because the Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon and 400 times further away. Venus spins backwards, some of the static on an old TV was the Big Bang, and almost all of the universe is missing. Every fact here links to its source.
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- Apollo 12 was struck by lightning 36 seconds after liftoff, then again 16 seconds later.
- NASA's Genesis capsule hit the Utah desert at around 300 km/h in 2004 because its deceleration sensors were installed backwards, so the parachute never fired.
- Hubble launched with a mirror polished to within a fraction of a wavelength of the wrong shape.
- Voyager 1 still stores data on an eight-track digital tape recorder.
- William Herschel named the planet he discovered in 1781 after his king: George's Star.