Flying through Earth's orbit are thousands of satellites and two operational space stations, including the International Space Station, which weighs as much as 77 elephants. The International Space Station, or ISS, hosts scientists and researchers from around the world as they contribute to discoveries in medicine, microbiology, Earth and space science, and more. The ISS travels very quickly around the Earth at 5 miles per second (8 kilometers per second), which means it could fly from Atlanta to London in 14 minutes. But at the same time, small chunks of rock called meteoroids shoot through space and burn up when they hit Earth's atmosphere. How is it that some objects ' such as the International Space Station ' orbit the Earth unscathed, while others, such as asteroids, burn up' Meteoroids are small chunks of rock and metal that orbit the Sun. These space rocks can travel between 7 and 25 miles per second (12 to 40 km per second). That's fast enough to cross the entire United...
learn more
