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JANET PETRO: Well, technically, space or outer
space is a big void.
It's a vacuum that exists beyond Earth.
And even though space is a vacuum, it's not empty.
Outer space contains millions of tiny particles.
Interestingly enough, there's no clear boundary between the
Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
Now officially, the United States designates anybody who
travels above an altitude of 50 miles as an astronaut.
But NASA's Mission Control use 76 miles as the outer edge of
space, because that's the altitude when the shuttles
re-enter into the Earth's atmosphere, and they start to
slow down a whole bunch.
The planet Earth is located in the solar system.
Now, our solar system has eight planets.
And this was nine when I was growing up, but we found out
that one really wasn't a planet it all.
And they orbit around a large star, the sun.
Now, some people believe that the name solar system
originated from our sun, or sol.
Our solar system is located in a spiral galaxy
called the Milky Way.
The Milky Way galaxy contains billions of stars, making the
possibility of solar systems similar to our
own virtually limitless.