Data collected in the 1990’s but apparently forgotten about until now shows that the Earth’s atmosphere is far larger than previously thought.
In fact, the data collected by NASA and the European Space Agency Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) between 1996 and 1998 shows that our planet’s atmosphere is actually 50 times the diameter of Earth or 630,000 Kilometres in diameter.
The discovery was made after the over 20-year-old data was analysed by scientists at Russia’s Space Research Institute.
SOHO gathered the surprising data when it was mapping the geocorona which is the layer of hydrogen atoms located where the atmosphere merges with outer space.
Most shockingly of all this means that Earth’s Moon lies right in the middle of its atmosphere as it is only 200,000 km’s away from our planet’s surface.
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