asked
At what point does space begin?
Amazingly, more than 50 years after astronauts started exploring space, there’s still no internationally recognized legal definition of where they have ventured. NASA traditionally awards anyone who reaches an altitude of 80km ‘astronaut’s wings’. During the 1960s eight pilots from NASA’s X-15 experimental rocket plane were awarded this accolade, like the astronauts of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, with pilot Joe Walker twice reaching a height of more than 100km in 1963. Most experts agree that missions to this altitude constitute genuine spaceflight, and it may yet become the legal standard, with lawyers in Australia in 2002 becoming the first to adopt 100km as the definition of where space begins.
