Space exploration in real life is just as mind-blowing as it looks in the movies.
The universe's size and scope are incomprehensible even to the most advanced scientists, but we're learning more and more about the final frontier every day.
Keep reading to learn 10 facts you didn't know about outer space.
1. Neutron stars can spin at a rate of 600 rotations per second
Neutron stars are one of the possible evolutionary end-points of high mass stars. They're born in a core-collapse supernova star explosion and subsequently rotate extremely rapidly as a consequence of their physics. Neutron stars can rotate up to 60 times per second after born. Under special circumstances, this rate can increase to more than 600 times per second.
2. Space is completely silent
Sound waves need a medium to travel through. Since there is no atmosphere in the vacuum of space, the realm between stars will always be eerily silent.
That said, worlds with atmospheres and air pressure do allow sound to travel, hence why there's plenty of noise on Earth and likely other planets as well.
3. NASA has recorded eerie space "sounds."
The Kepler space telescope records data as light, which NASA can convert into sound. REUTERS/NASA
NASA uses a technique called data sonification to take signals from radio waves, plasma waves, and magnetic fields and convert them into audio tracks to "hear" what's happening in space.
The sounds range from ambulance-like screeches to beeps reminiscent of an alien spaceship making its approach.
4. Sunsets on Mars are blue.
The Curiosity Mars rover's first color photograph of a sunset in 2015 revealed a surprising twist — sunsets on Mars are blue.
NASA said this is because "dust in the Martian atmosphere has fine particles that permit blue light to penetrate the atmosphere more efficiently than longer-wavelength colors" like yellow, orange, and red.
5. Space is full of "space junk."
Space is full of junk like used rocket parts and dead satellites. These objects continue to orbit Earth at about 17,500 mph — 10 times as fast as a speeding bullet.
The Space Surveillance Network (SSN) keeps track of how much debris is out there and who's responsible for it. The SSN is currently tracking 23,000 objects larger than a softball.
Space junk is dangerous because one collision could trigger a chain reaction of objects hitting each other, resulting in a thick cloud of debris that would make space travel extremely dangerous. This kind of disaster was the premise of the 2013 movie "Gravity".
The US is responsible for the most space junk with 3,990 pieces of debris as of March 28, 2018. Russia is responsible for 3,959 pieces of debris, followed by China with 3,893.
6. The International Space Station (ISS) is the size of a football field.
The International Space Station is 357 feet long, just three feet less than an American football field. It weighs 925,000 pounds and is the largest single human-made structure to ever enter space.
The ISS has been visited by 230 people from 18 different countries to conduct research and carry out missions.
7. The Apollo astronauts' footprints on the moon will probably stay there for at least 100 million years
Since the moon doesn't have an atmosphere, there's no wind or water to erode or wash away the Apollo astronauts' mark on the moon. That means their footprints, roverprints, spaceship prints, and discarded materials will stay preserved on the moon for a very long time.
They won't stay on there forever, though. The moon still a dynamic environment. It's actually being constantly bombarded with "micrometeorites," which means that erosion is still happening on the moon, just very slowly.
8. The largest known star
The largest known starThe largest known star in the universe is what we call the UY Scuti present in the constellation Scutum. It’s estimated radius is 1.88 x 109 kilometers. That is more than 1700 times than our sun’s radius and more than 5 billion times in volume that of our sun.
It is a variable star (means it’s brightness level is variable) which was first discovered in 1860, but it wasn’t until 2012 that we got to know about its true size when seen from a larger telescope in Chile’s desert. It then surpassed VY Canis Majoris (largest known star before 2012) as the largest known star. UY Scuti is approximately 9500 light years away from us. Our own sun appears as a peanut when compared to UY Scuti.
10. There are probably more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 septillion) stars in the universe.
Nine years of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed about 10,000 galaxies in one of the deepest, darkest patches of night sky in the universe.
The Milky Way galaxy contains about 100 billion stars. If you multiply that by the estimated number of galaxies in the observable universe (10 trillion is a modest guess) you get a number that is 1 with 24 zeroes after it: 1 septillion.
David Kornreich, an assistant professor at Ithaca College, said that number is probably much too low because more galaxies will likely be discovered as technology improves.