• Question: where does space begin?

    Asked by applepie7 to Amy on 10 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Amy Tyndall

      Amy Tyndall answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) says that space officially starts 100km above the Earth’s surface and you can earn your ‘astronaut’s wings’ if you make it up that far. Now, that’s pretty high up… Did you see Felix Baumgartner do his crazy sky-dive?? That was only 39km up, and already looked like he was right in ‘outer space’… Look at this photo!

      In terms of where space begins, meaning the ‘universe’, nobody knows! You can think of it a little like having blown up a balloon – you can’t locate one particular starting point for where the balloon first started to expand, but it must have started somewhere…

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