There is no physical place where earth’s atmosphere stops and space begins. The air just gets thinner and thinner and eventually fades away.

On his 108 minute flight in 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human being in space, went into orbit around the Earth. 

By all accounts, he crossed the mysterious border between the Earth and space. Or did he?

It’ has been more than half a century since Gagarin’s historic journey but only now have we come up with a universally accepted definition of where space begins.

“Simply put, space is just above your head, 100 kilometres up,” said Dave Reneke from Australasian Science Magazine. 

“It’s only an hour’s drive away – if your could go straight up!”

You know, our atmosphere has as many as five distinct layers.

Continue moving upward and you’ll eventually encounter the mesosphere, the section in which meteors generally burn up.

A little further and the atmosphere ultimately merges with space. Think of it as the city limits.

This is where Earth stops and the heavens start!

This is the age of spaceflight, it’s also the age of space tourism.

“In order for Sir Richard Branson to start selling tickets and advertise his upcoming space flights he requested a definite ceiling height,” Dave said.

“The US authorities considered, consulted, and then made a ruling that space officially begins at the 100 kilometre mark.”

Above Earth’s atmosphere we welcome true space, outer space if you will! It’s the ‘space’ between the planets. When we leave the solar system we enter ‘interstellar space’– the space between the stars. Easy, isn’t it?

A Singapore-based venture company aspiring to enter the space business unveiled a life-sized model of a satellite that would retrieve space debris, with which the company hopes to make commercially viable by 2020.

Most orbital debris is old satellites and satellite components.

Around 750,000 pieces of space debris at least 1 centimeter in diameter are said to be in near-Earth orbit,