HERE’S a question: do you know what happens to pee in space?
If yes, urine with a chance of nailing this quiz.
6
6
6
If not, you (and the kids) can swot up with the new CBeebies series Horrible Science, starting May 9.
From the award-winning brains behind Horrible Histories, it promises to make science fun.
In the meantime, give our quiz a go and find out if your science know-how is out of this world . . .
Q1 IF astronauts throw up while they’re in space, what happens to their sick?
a) It turns blue
b) It turns ball-shaped
c) It smells of flowers
Q2 WHICH method has NEVER been used to get rid of pee in space?
a) Throwing pee straight out of the spacecraft
b) Turning pee into drinking water
c) Using the pee as rocket fuel
Q3 NASA plans to return to the Moon next year with the Artemis project.
Which of the following items have been left on the moon during previous missions?
a) Golf balls
b) A hammer and a feather
c) 96 bags of poo
Q4 SOME parts of the Moon have hugely horrible names – which TWO are real ones?
a) The Sea of Blood
b) The Ocean of Pain
c) The Marsh of Decay
d) The Lake of Death
5. The Horribly Huge Grand Tour
This takes you to the edge of the solar system (our Sun and planets).
Simply answer a question at each stop on the way.
Stop 1: The Sun
The Sun is so big that it takes up 99.8 per cent of all the matter in the solar system.
And it is super-powerful. Imagine a piece of sun the size of a postage stamp – how much light would it produce?
a) Equal to a dim light bulb
b) Equal to over 1,000 light bulbs
c) Nothing – it would explode
Stop 2: Mercury
During the day Mercury gets hotter than 430C. Why do scientists think there’s ice on Mercury?
a) It’s special ice that only melts at very high temperatures.
b) The ice is at the centre of the planet.
c) The ice is in deep craters that stay in shadow.
Stop 3: Venus
Venus is hotter than a pizza oven. What weird weather might you find there?
a) Acid clouds and metal snow
b) Natural toffee rain caused by sugars heating in the atmosphere
c) Stinky-steamy fog – imagine a hot shower in a blocked toilet
Stop 4: Earth
Planet Earth ought to be Planet Water because it’s mostly covered by the wet stuff.
Like all planets, Earth orbits the Sun. But how fast is our planet moving?
a) It moved 27km in the time you took to read this question
b) It moved 27million km in the time you took to read this question
c) It moved 27cm in the time you took to read this question.
6
6
Stop 5: Mars
Mars is a grim planet. It’s icy cold and there’s nothing to breathe. It does have two little moons.
Deimos is the smallest – it has weak gravity. How weak?
a) If you fart, you’ll fly into space
b) If you let the air out of a balloon, you’ll fly into space
c) If you ride a bike, you’ll fly into space
Stop 6: The Asteroid Belt
Between Mars and Jupiter there’s a dwarf planet called Ceres and millions of asteroids (space rocks, remember?).
Asteroids come in all shapes and sizes but there’s one thing they don’t have – what is it?
a) Gold
b) Atmosphere
c) Moons
Stop 7: Jupiter
It is so big all the other planets can fit inside it. Why does Jupiter have a big red spot?
a) It’s a horribly huge infection caused by alien bacteria
b) It’s a horribly huge hurricane bigger than the entirety of Earth
c) It’s a horribly huge area of red rocks
Stop 8: Saturn
Saturn’s famous rings are made from rocks – some as big as houses and some as small as bugs. Why do the rings vanish every 15 years?
a) They reflect sunlight but only do this from certain angles
b) They break apart and need to re-form from time to time
c) The rings are very thin and you can’t see them when they’re end-on to Earth
Stop 9: Uranus
Uranus is mainly made up of gas – its atmosphere stinks of farts (that’s due to hydrogen sulphide). Why is the winter especially cold and miserable?
a) Uranus is a slow-spinning planet
b) The planet spins at an odd angle and has a long year
c) The stinky atmosphere is like a deep-freeze keeping the planet cold
Stop 10: Neptune
Neptune is another cold, gassy planet. How windy is Neptune?
a) The wind blows at 2,000km
per hour
b) The wind blows at 50km
per hour
c) No one knows – a robot space probe was sent to measure the weather, but it got blown back to Uranus
Q6 WHICH of the following can happen to astronauts when they’re in space?
a) They get taller
b) They need to pee more regularly
c) Their fingernails can fall off
6
Answers
A1 b) It turns ball-shaped.
With no gravity to pull it downward, vomit comes out in free-floating blobs of chunky fluid.
The blobs can drift and break into small blobs, which can be a big problem in a sealed, sensitive environment like the International Space Station.
NASA prepares for this by training astronauts to vomit into special “barf bags” that are designed for space.
Unlike regular sick bags, these space ones have a one-way valve to prevent anything from floating back out.
But if anyone misses the bag, the crew must treat it as a biohazard.
As the vomit is free-floating, it could get into equipment and short-circuit the electronics or clog up air filters, risking the air flow into the spaceship.
WHY A BALL? On Earth, when you vomit, gravity pulls the liquid downward – into a toilet, a bag, the floor (hopefully not the last one).
But in space, gravity isn’t pulling things down.
On the ISS, astronauts are in microgravity, which means they’re constantly free-falling around Earth – essentially experiencing weightlessness.
When you throw up in microgravity, the vomit comes out of your mouth, but instead of falling, it just floats.
Liquids in space naturally clump into blobs due to surface tension – the force that makes water form droplets.
So vomit in space forms a gross, sticky sphere that just hovers there until it hits something – like a face. In space, surface tension dominates, so ALL fluids – water, sweat, pee and vomit – will float around in blobs unless contained.
Vomiting in space is totally a thing, especially during the first few days when astronauts are getting used to floating around in microgravity.
“Space Sickness” affects about two thirds of astronauts in the first 48 hours; the brain gets confused because the inner ear is used to gravity-based cues for balance and in space everything is floaty and weird!
A2 c) It has never been used as rocket fuel.
The space shuttles of the 1980s dumped pee into space.
One astronaut described how it froze into shiny crystals that twinkled as the Sun set behind Earth. That’s beautiful.
On the International Space Station, the astronauts drink their own purified pee – fancy a glug?
A3 a), b) and c): There’s no way of refuelling on the moon, so Nasa had to send the heavy fuel that would be needed to blast back off again from the moon and return to Earth, along with the astronauts when they originally blasted off into space.
To save any further weight, the missions that went to the moon also left as much behind as possible to save on the amount of fuel then needed to get back home – hence there are quite a lot of items still up there!
Alan Shephard left golf balls on the moon after taking two shots during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
George Scott left a hammer and a feather on the moon during the Apollo 15 mission, also in 1971, after proving Galileo’s theory that in the absence of air resistance, objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass.
During a moonwalk, he held a geologist’s hammer (heavy and solid) and a falcon’s feather (light and delicate).
He dropped them at the same time on the lunar surface and . . . they hit the ground at exactly the same time. It was a beautiful, simple demonstration of physics, proving Galileo’s famous theory from around 380 years earlier.
The Moon gave a perfect laboratory to test the theory as it has no atmosphere, so no air resistance, to cause the feather to flutter as it fell.
NASA also deliberately placed long-term science experi-ments on the surface, including seismo-meters to detect Moonquakes.
The Apollo missions also left messages for future generations, and symbols of peace including a gold olive branch and a plaque that says “We came in peace for all mankind”.
A4 c) and d): One day they might have to change these names – they’re sure to put off space tourists!
A5 1. b) The Sun is seriously bright. But you know that already – the Sun is 148million km away from us and it is still dazzling!
c) The craters are at the poles which get less sunlight than the rest of the planet.
a) Venus is a really stupid place to go on holiday.
a) Earth moves at 107,000km per hour – and don’t forget it spins too. How come we aren’t totally dizzy?
b) Deimos looks amazingly like a potato but it’s actually covered in about 100 metres of space dust. Dusty old potatoes – yuck!
b) Asteroids don’t have enough gravity to stop an atmosphere floating into space. Some have gold and some have their own tiny moons!
b) The hurricane has been raging for centuries and no one knows why it’s red! It may be due to coloured chemicals in the hurricane.
c) The rings are tens of thousands of kilometres wide but less than one kilometre thick!
b) Uranus actually spins sideways in space so its poles face the Sun in turn. The other pole is very cold and dark. And since one year lasts 84 Earth years, winter takes 21 years! No wonder it’s so cold and miserable.
a) Neptune is actually the windiest place in the solar system.
A6 1. a), b) and c): In space, astronauts get a little taller because there’s no gravity to squish their spines.
Without gravity, their bones can stretch out, making them about two inches taller.
But when they return to Earth, gravity pulls everything back to normal and they shrink back to their regular height.
In space, astronauts also pee more. Normally, gravity pulls fluids down to their legs but in space there’s no gravity to hold things down.
So, all the fluids in their body float up to their chest and head.
Their body notices the shift and starts making extra pee to get rid of the extra fluid.
After a few days, their body gets used to space and everything goes back to normal.
It’s like their body has to adjust to the weirdness of space before things settle down.
Astronauts’ fingernails can fall off in space because their gloves are super tight, which puts pressure on their hands and nails.
Plus, in space, their blood flow changes, so their nails don’t get the nutrients they need to stay strong.
The result? Sometimes their nails just fall off. It’s one of the weird things astronauts have to deal with.
Unlock even more award-winning articles as The Sun launches brand new membership programme – Sun Club.
