What If You Traveled Through the Oort Cloud? Humanity dreams of one day visiting distant star systems and potentially habitable planets. But to do so, not only will we need to devise a way to travel much faster than we’re currently able to, we’ll also have to navigate through the mysterious Oort cloud. So, what awaits us in the darkest confines of our solar system?
NASA defines the Oort cloud as “the most distant region of our solar system”. A theorised structure, it consists of the last objects to be caught in the sun’s gravitational pull and it marks the final divide between us and interstellar space. It’s thought to be a massive sphere or shell encompassing all sides of the solar system and is mostly made of icy chunks of space debris.
The Oort Cloud may be unreachable for now, but many comets and asteroids are not. In fact, NASA and other space agencies have a whole flotilla of robotic spacecraft that are exploring these small worlds up close, including @OSIRISREx. Meet some of them: https://t.co/YTX32yMzb0 pic.twitter.com/IeX7XjhjeX
— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) October 9, 2018
0 Comments