Holding Space
This is NASA's famous orbiting laboratory
The International Space Station (ISS)
This NASA mission in 1969 put the first humans on the Moon.
Apollo 11
This notable mathematician invented Calculus.
Isaac Newton/Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
This term describes the bone density and muscle mass astronauts lose from reduced mechanical loading in microgravity.
Atrophy/Deconditioning
This 2014 Christopher Nolan film uses a black hole named Gargantua and time dilation near it to strand its astronauts decades behind on Earth.
Interstellar (2014)
Einstein's theory combines these two concepts into one four-dimensional model of the universe.
Space and time/Spacetime
This reusable-rocket company, founded by Elon Musk, builds the Falcon 9 and Starship.
SpaceX
This machine gave rise to the industrial revolution.
Steam Engine (1716)
NASA's experiment on the ISS uses this pillow-like growth chamber to study vegetable growth in space.
Vegetable Production System/VEGGIE
This 2015 film, based on Andy Weir's novel, follows an astronaut who survives on Mars by growing potatoes in his own waste.
The Martian (2015)
The region surrounding Earth where satellites orbit and where GPS signals travel
Geospace
This vast region beyond Neptune's orbit is home to countless icy bodies, including the dwarf planet Pluto, and is thought to be the source of many short-period comets.
Kuiper Belt
This engineer is known as the "Father of AC Electrical Systems"
Nikola Tesla
Aboard the ISS, this system recycles astronaut sweat, breath, and even urine back into drinking water.
Water Recovery System/Water Recycling
This 1968 Stanley Kubrick film features the sentient computer HAL 9000 and a famously slow, silent depiction of space travel.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
In robotics and CAD, this term describes the volume a robotic arm can physically reach.
Workspace
Named for an Austrian physicist, this effect shifts the wavelength of light from a moving source and shows astronomers that galaxies are receding from us.
Doppler Effect
This scientist built the world's first large-scale electrical distribution network.
Thomas Edison
This process, studied in microgravity because it forms purer, more ordered samples, helps researchers design new drugs.
Protein Crystallization
In this 1995 film starring Tom Hanks, the crew's famous line "Houston, we have a problem" narrates a real near-disaster mission to the Moon.
Apollo 13 (1995)
In thermodynamics, this mathematical framework represents every possible state of a system using variables like pressure, volume, and energy.
Phase space
About 1.5 million km from Earth toward deep space, this gravitationally balanced point is home to the James Webb Space Telescope.
Solar Sail
This was the the world's first commercially available high-level programming language
FORTRAN
Tardigrades survive the vacuum of space by entering this dormant, near-death metabolic state.
Cryptobiosis
This 2013 film starring Sandra Bullock was praised by NASA scientists for realistically depicting the physics of orbital debris and depressurization, though its constant sound in vacuum was one of its few inaccuracies.
Gravity (2013)