The KSC INSPIRE Student Unconference included a simulated launch of a Delta II rocket with students standing in for the launch team.

There are 36 students at the KSC INSPIRE Student Unconference!

When we look at the farthest visible star we are looking 4 billion years into the past—the light from that star traveling at 186,000 miles a second, has taken that many years to reach us.

If one were to capture and bottle a comet's 10,000 mile vapor trail, the amount of vapor actually present in the bottle would take up less than 1 cubic inch of space.

Because of Pluto's irregular orbit, there are periods of times when it is closer to the sun than Neptune.

Pluto's thin atmosphere contains traces of methane, nitrogen and carbon dioxide.

The sun would look like a bright star from Pluto, since they are so far away from each other.

Pluto has an enormous moon for its size, Charon. It is more than half the size of Pluto. It currently has five observed moons.

The color of Pluto is reddish-brown.

The color of Pluto is reddish-brown.

Pluto is smaller than the Earth's moon.

Neptune is so far away that it took the space probe Voyager 2, 12 years to reach it.

Neptune is the stormiest planet. The winds there can blow up to 1,240 miles per hour, that is three times as fast as Earth's Hurricanes.

The atmosphere of Neptune is made up of Hydrogen, Helium and Methane.

Neptune is a sea blue color due to the methane gas in its atmosphere.

Neptune is 30 times farther from the sun as is the Earth.

Neptune has 8 known moons.

Because of the strange way it spins, nights on some parts of Uranus can last for more than 40 years.

Even though Neptune is further from the sun, Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system.

Neptune is a sea blue color due to the methane gas in its atmosphere.

Uranus is the second least dense planet after Saturn.

It takes 30,685 Earth days for Uranus to complete an orbit around the sun.

Uranus mass is more than 14 times larger than Earth.

Saturn has no solid surface. It is a giant ball of gas, but it does have a solid inner core.

Saturn has over 30 known Satellites, but many of them are small and faint.

Saturn's rings are made up of billions of pieces of rocks and dust.

It takes about 29.46 Earth years for Saturn to orbit around our sun.

Saturn has the lowest density of all the planets in the solar system. It is so light that it could actually float on water if there was an ocean big enough to hold it.

A 100 pound object on Earth would weight 116 pounds on Saturn.

Unlike other planets, Jupiter sends out a strong radio radiation that can be detected on Earth.

Jupiter has the biggest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede. It is even bigger than Mercury and Pluto.

The great red spot on Jupiter is a storm that has been going on for over 300 years.

Jupiter's volume is large enough to contain 1,300 planets the size of Earth.

The mass of Jupiter is 70% of the total mass of all the other planets in our Solar System.

Jupiter has a mass 318 times greater than the Earth's and a diameter that is 11 times larger.

At its brightest, Mars outshines every other planet apart from Venus.

Valleys and Canyons on Mars suggest that the planet once had large amounts of surface water.

Like Earth, the poles of Mars are covered in ice. The ice becomes thicker in the winter.

Mars has the tallest Volcano in the Solar System named Olympus Mons and it is 15 miles high which is three times the height of Mount Everest.

One of Mars' moons, Phobos, is moving closer and closer to Mars. Scientists think that one day it will crash into Mars.

Mars is red because it is rusty. There is a lot of iron in the soil, and the air on Mars has made it turn red-just like rusty iron on Earth.

If the world were to become totally flat and the oceans distributed themselves evenly over the earth's surface, the water would be approximately 2 miles deep at every point.

The temperature of the Earth's interior increases by 1 degree every 60 feet down.

The Earth weighs 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

If the Earth were compressed to a sphere with a 2-inch diameter, its surface would be as smooth as a billiard ball's.

The oldest rocks in the world, the so-called St. Peter and St. Paul stones in the Atlantic Ocean, are 4 billion years old.

The Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. It travels through space at 660,000 miles per hour.

Venus is the brightest planet viewed from Earth.

Venus has mountains that are higher than Earth. Maat Mons is more than 5 miles high.

It is believed that Venus used to have bodies of water similar to Earth, but dried up over a period of 300 million years when the sun began admitting more solar energy after the sun's infancy stage.

Venus is the most widely explored planet aside from our own Earth. Numerous space probes have been sent to Venus to gather data and some have landed on the surface.

Venus rotates so slowly that it orbits the sun faster than it can make one whole rotation on its axis. In other words, Venus has a longer day than year.

Venus is the second planet from the sun and the closest planet to Earth. It is about 7,520 miles which is about 400 miles smaller than that of Earth.

The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, looking much like our moon.

Mercury is the most iron rich planet in the Solar System with an iron core like Earth.

Because of a lack of an atmosphere, the temperature on Mercury rises above 800°F while on the dark side it falls rapidly to -300°F.

Mercury has virtually no atmosphere. It however has small traces of an atmosphere which consists minute quantities of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Sodium, Potassium and argon.

The sun appears 2 and a half times larger in Mercury's sky compared to the Earth's.

Mercury is the planet nearest to the sun. It has a diameter of 3,031 miles, about two-fifths the Earth's diameter.

New digital cockpit designs are referred to as 'glass cockpit'.

The first flying vehicle to exceed the speed of sound was the German V-2 Missile.

In 1908, Frenchman René Lorin invented the ramjet engine. This was realized only after many decades.

Sir Frank Whittle made the first patent for a turbojet as a powerplant.

The world's second oldest airline is Qantas, being established in 1920.

The world's oldest airline is KLM, being established in 1919.

In 1987, American Airlines eliminated one olive from each salad in served in first class which saved them $40,000.

A three man crew consists of the captain, co-pilot, and flight engineer. Some aircraft have been designed to replace the flight engineer position with computers due to cost cutting.

The Boeing 787 was revealed on July 8, 2007 (7/8/'07).

There are over 3 million people in the air on planes at any one time.

The worlds first flying car arrives in 2012. Called the Terrafugia, it costs $194,000

There are over 14,000 commercial flights in the air at any one time.

The average age of commercial aircraft is 19 years. (How safe is a 19 year old car?)

In 1940 to fly London – New York it cost 1 years wages. Today it costs the wage of working only Monday & Tuesday.

The average profit per seat on a 1 hour flight is $2.20.

The airline industry has currently made a net loss of $31 billion dollars since 1940.

Flight is not the safest form of travel. The bus is on all measures. The motorcycle is the most dangerous on all measures.

Only 5% of the worlds population have ever been on an airplane.

Discovery takes its name from four British ships of exploration named Discovery, primarily HMS Discovery, one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook during his third and final major voyage from 1776 to 1779.

NASA has offered Discovery to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum for public display and preservation. Discovery will replace Enterprise in the Smithsonian's display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.

By its last mission, Discovery had flown 149 million miles (238 million km) in 39 missions, completed 5,830 orbits, and spent 365 days in orbit in over 27 years.

In 1984, Discovery became the third operational orbiter following Columbia and Challenger.

Space Shuttle Discovery has the Orbiter Vehicle Designation of OV-103.

Space Shuttle Discovery was operational from its maiden flight, STS-41-D on August 30, 1984, until its final landing during STS-133 on March 9, 2011.

On May 11, 2009, astronaut Michael J. Massimino, a crewmember of the space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission, became the first person to use the microblogging site Twitter in space.

After the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, when that orbiter and its STS-51-L mission crew were lost, the agency resumed the sequential numbering system, starting with STS-26.

What would have been STS-11 was named STS-41-B, STS-12 became STS-41-C, and STS-13 was STS-41-D. The first number was the last digit in the fiscal year (1984), the second number indicated the launch site (1 for Kennedy Space Center, and 6 for Vandenberg Air Force Base), and the letter indicated the sequence (A was the first launch of the year, and so on).

Initially, space shuttle missions were given sequential numbers indicating their order of launch, from STS-1 through STS-9. However, because the then-NASA administrator James Beggs suffered from triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13) and wanted to avoid associations with the unlucky Apollo 13 mission, the agency drew up a new numbering system for space shuttle missions, according to NASA history accounts by several astronauts at time.

The space shuttle program is officially known as the Space Transportation System (STS), and so each shuttle mission is designated with the prefix "STS."

Columbia, the first space shuttle to fly, weighed the most because NASA was still searching for lighter materials to use, and integrated some of these into the later orbiters.

The heaviest space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, weighed 178,000 pounds (80,700 kg), roughly the weight of 13 African Elephants.

All of the tiles on an Orbiter are thoroughly inspected before liftoff – they are a crucial tool that allows the space shuttle to endure the intense heat endured when the shuttle re-enters Earth's atmosphere to land. After the tiles are heated to peak temperature, the tiles can cool fast enough to be held in your hand only a minute later.

The space shuttle's Thermal Protection System, or heat shield, contains more than 30,000 tiles that are constructed essentially of sand.

Spacelab, a reusable laboratory built for use on space shuttle flights, allowed scientists to perform experiments in microgravity . Starting in 1983's Challenger missions, animals became a prime component of space science. On the STS-7 mission, the social activities of ant colonies in zero gravity were examined, and during STS-8, six rats were flown in the Animal Enclosure module to study animal behavior in space.

The space shuttle isn't just a mode of transport: It's a laboratory, too. There have been 22 Spacelab missions, or missions where science, astronomy, and physics have been studied inside a special module carried on the space shuttle.

Only one president has been on hand to witness a space shuttle launch. President Bill Clinton, along with his wife Hillary Clinton, watched Mercury astronaut John Glenn's return to space on the STS-95 flight on Oct. 29, 1998 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The combined mileage of all five orbiters is 513.7 million miles (826.7 million km), or 1.3 times the distance between Earth and Jupiter. Each orbiter, except for Challenger, traveled farther than the distance between Earth and the sun.

While in orbit, the space shuttle travels around Earth at a speed of about 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour. At this speed, the crew can see a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

In NASA spacesuits, communications are provided via a cap worn over the head, which includes earphones and a microphone. Due to the coloration of the version used for Apollo and Skylab, which resembled the coloration of the comic strip character Snoopy, these caps became known as "Snoopy caps".

The Apollo/Skylab A7L suit included eleven layers in all: an inner liner, a liquid cooling and ventilation garment, a pressure bladder, a restraint layer, another liner, and a thermal micrometeoroid garment consisting of five aluminized insulation layers and an external layer of white Ortho-Fabric.

Above Armstrong's Line (the altitude that produces an atmospheric pressure so low (0.0618 atmosphere) that water boils at the normal temperature of the human body: 37 °C (98.6 °F)~around 19,000 m/62,000 ft), the atmosphere is so thin that pressurized suits are needed.

The first space suit worn by a human in space was the Soviet Union SK-1 suit worn by Yuri Gargarin in 1961.

The first full pressure-suits for use at extreme altitudes were designed by individual inventors as early as the 1930s.

The analogue Mars Lander Habitat, commonly referred to as "The HAB", is a two story cylinder that measures about 10 meters (33 ft) in diameter and is a crew's combined home and place of work during a Mars surface exploration simulation.

MDRS crew members must wear an analogue space suit simulator or a "sim suit" when completing tasks outside the Habitat (HAB) to simulate the protection they would need from the in reality very harsh Martian environment.

The Mars Society launched the Mars Analog Research Station (MARS) Project in order to develop key knowledge needed to prepare for the human exploration of Mars.

The MDRS station is situated on the San Rafael Swell of southern Utah, located 11.63 kilometers (7.23 mi) by road north west of Hanksville, Utah.

The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is the second of four planned simulated Mars surface exploration habitats (or Mars Analogue Research Stations) owned and operated by the Mars Society.

John Glenn found it hard to choke down his food, but not because of the lack of gravity: Early astronauts relied on aluminum tubes of semiliquid mush, food cubes, and dehydrated meals.

Contrary to Hollywood, though, you wouldn’t explode if you are ever exposed to the vacuum of space without a suit on. Lack of oxygen in the blood is what would kill you, but it would take about two minutes.

If you are ever exposed to the vacuum of space without a suit on, water on the tongue, in the nose, and in the eyes would boil away. This actually happened in 1965, when a space suit failed during a NASA experiment and the tester was exposed to a near vacuum for 15 seconds.

If you are ever exposed to the vacuum of space without a suit on, don’t hold your breath: Sudden decompression would cause your lungs to rupture.

At the start of the workday on the space shuttle, mission control in Houston broadcasts wake-up music, usually selected with a particular astronaut in mind. On the all-work, no-play International Space Station, crews wake to an alarm clock.

In weightlessness, fluids shift upward, causing nasal congestion and a puffy face; bones lose calcium, forming kidney stones; and muscles atrophy, slowing the bowels and shrinking the heart.

Nearly every astronaut experiences some space sickness, caused by the wildly confusing information reaching their inner ears. In addition to nausea, symptoms include headaches and trouble locating your own limbs.

A 2001 study showed that astronauts who snored on Earth snoozed silently in space. That's because gravity plays a dominant role in the generation of apneas, hypopneas, and snoring.

Without the compressive force of gravity while in orbit, your spinal column expands and you grow taller, usually by between 5 and 8 cm.

Orbiting the Earth, you will experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day.

Each Mercury astronaut named his capsule and added the numeral 7 to denote the teamwork of the original astronauts.

Prior to the manned Mercury flights, unmanned tests of the booster and the capsule, carrying a chimpanzee, were made.

The Mercury program used two launch vehicles: A Redstone for the suborbital and an Atlas for the four orbital flights.

The blunt end of the Mercury capsule was covered with an ablative heat shield to protect it against the 3000 degree heat of entry into the atmosphere.

The Mercury spacecraft was two meters (6 ft, 10 in) long, 1.9 meters (6 ft, 2 1/2 in) in diameter, with a 5.8 meter (19 ft, 2 in) escape tower was fastened to the cylinder of the capsule.

The first U.S. spaceship was a cone-shaped one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. It was named Mercury.

The Internet is the fastest-growing communications tool ever. It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million, television 13 years, and the Internet just 4 years.

The first two video games copyrighted in the U.S. were Asteroids and Lunar Lander in 1980.

Fifteen Saturn Vs were built. The National Air&Space Museum's collection includes three Saturn Vs exhibited at NASA visitor centers in Alabama, Florida, and Texas.

The Saturn V 1st stage could power the rocket to a height of around 42 miles and speeds of around 2.5km/sec. The 2nd stage took it to over 100 miles in height and achieved near orbital velocity. The 3rd stage was used in 2 steps: first to insert the Apollo spacecraft into an earth orbit. And then it was fired again to get it to the ‘escape velocity’ of around 11.2 km/sec, and onwards towards the moon.

The 1st stage of the Saturn V rocket consumed kerosene and liquid oxygen. The 2nd and 3rd stages consumed liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Unlike the space shuttle, or any of the rockets in the Indian Space Program, there were no solid fuel boosters. A majority of the 3000 tons liftoff weight of the Saturn V comprised of the propellant and liquid oxygen.

The noise levels and vibrations/shockwaves generated during lift-off of the Saturn V (or ‘blast-off’ as it is often and more appropriately referred to…) were so high that spectators were kept at least 3 miles away.

The thrust generated by each of the Saturn V first stage’s F1 engine was around 7.6 Million lb ft. Compare that with a supersonic fighter jet, F16: 23,000 lb ft and an engine of the Boeing 747: 60,000 lb ft.

The total lift capacity of the Saturn V for putting a payload in a ‘low earth orbit’ (LEO) was about 120 Tons. And the capacity for putting a payload in a lunar orbit was around 47 Tons. For comparison imagine putting an entire fully loaded Boeing 757 into a low earth orbit, or a Boeing 737 into a lunar orbit!

The fuel consumption of the Saturn V first stage was a staggering 15 Tons / sec of Kerosene. The fuel pumps that fed the engines alone consumed 100s of MW of power, enough to light an entire city.

The power generated by the 5 F1 engines of the Saturn V first stage was in excess of 150 GW (1 GW = 1,000 MW). That’s roughly equivalent to the entire installed power generation capacity in India! Or nearly 2.5 times of the power generation capacity in Texas.

The Saturn V rocket stood 363 ft. (over 35 stories tall) 33 ft. in diameter, and weighed around 3,000 tons. The height was about 2 times that of the space shuttle.

The Saturn V remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status from a height, weight and payload standpoint. (In the 1980s, the Soviets designed and developed a rocket that was slightly more powerful, but it was never fully operational.)

High speed passenger trains in China reach speeds of up to 350 kph (220 mph).

The word engineer comes from a Latin word meaning ‘cleverness’.

Engineers solve practical problems by applying mathematical and scientific knowledge.

According to Moore's Law, microchips double in power every 18 to 24 months.

220 million tons of old computers and other technological hardware are trashed in the United States each year.

A black hole cannot be viewed directly because light cannot escape it. However, matter swirling around a black hole, usually gas and dust, heats up and emits radiation that can be detected. However, deep in the center of a supermassive black hole, stars can also be found.

Stars are powered by nuclear fuel; most stars use hydrogen. The larger a star is, the faster it will use up its fuel, and thus, the sooner it "dies". If the stars are large enough, however, then the gravitational pull will crush the star to 'zero volume', or in the Schwarzschild radius. This forms a black hole.

By using the correct equations for motion, it can be predicted that near a black hole, an object on a radial path will have a velocity approaching the speed of light. This occurs as the object approaches the event horizon.

The center of a black hole, the singularity, is the point where the laws of physics break down. These singularities are hidden, or 'clothed' by the black hole, so that the effects of the breakdown cannot be observed by people outside.

Black holes can suck up other black holes when they come in close proximity. Usually the larger one will suck up the smaller one. Depending on the size of the matter that is making up the black holes, the size of the black hole created will differ. Direct collisions between black holes are rare, as black holes are very small for their mass. Black holes may also merge.

Although whiteholes are mathematically possible, there have yet to be observations to prove their existence.

In theory, any matter can become black holes, as long as they are compressed to zero volume and thus, yielding infinite density. However, only the largest of stars have cores capable with the gravitational force to compress the star to the Schwarzschild radius. Most others stars without this gravitational force end up as neutron stars and white dwarfs.

Although black holes have a strong suction force, they may only suck up what crosses their event horizons, and, therefore, are not capable of absorbing the whole universe.

The closest known black hole to Earth is Cygnus X-1, located about 8000 light years away.

In the strictest and most exact sense, there are currently 14 known black holes.

Eris takes approximately 550 earth years to orbit the sun. The majority of the time, it is further from the sun than Pluto, but for a short time, it is closer.

In January 2005, astronomers in the United States discovered a new body orbiting the sun in our solar system. They named this planetoid, Eris after the Greek goddess of strife.

Pluto’s orbit sometimes brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune. It crossed Neptune's orbit on September 5, 1989 and remained closer until February, 1999.

Like Jupiter, Neptune has a dark spot caused by a storm. Neptune's spot is smaller than Jupiter's -- it is only about the size of the planet earth.

Uranus’ axis is at a 97 degree angle, meaning that it orbits lying on its side! Talk about a lazy planet.

The ring that surrounds Saturn could be the remnants of a moon that was shattered by Saturn's gravity.

Saturn is the second biggest planet, but it’s also the lightest planet. If there was a bathtub big enough to hold Saturn, it would float in the water!

Jupiter is so big that you could fit all the other planets in the solar system inside it. The red spot of Jupiter is the biggest, most violent storm in the known universe -- that spot is at least three times the size of earth!

Between Mars and Jupiter, is a Dwarf Planet known as Ceres. It was discovered in 1801. It is the smallest dwarf planet discovered in our universe (so far) and is the only one found in the asteroid belt.

Mars is the home of "Olympus Mons", the largest volcano found in the solar system. It stands about 27 kilometers high with a crater 81 kilometers wide.

Earth has more exposed water than land. Three quarters of the Earth is covered by water!

Venus is the solar system's brightest planet -- yellow clouds of sulfuric acid reflect the Sun's light brightly.

Venus is the brightest planet in our sky and can sometimes be seen during the day if you know where to look. urrently it is visible in the east after sunset.

Happy Perihelion! Earth will reach the point in it's orbit closest to the sun at 7pm CT.