What is Karman Line?

On July 11, British businessman Richard Branson and five crewmates from Virgin Galactic made their journey into space on the company’s own rocket ship ‘Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity’. But experts and space enthusiasts are in doubt whether the height to which he travelled can be termed ‘space’.

What is Kármán Line?

• The 1967 Outer Space Treaty states that outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all, but there is no definitive law stating where national air space actually ends and outer space begins.

• According to NOAA, a common definition of space is known as the Kármán Line, an imaginary boundary 100 kilometers (62 miles) above mean sea level.

• In theory, once this 100 km line is crossed, the atmosphere becomes too thin to provide enough lift for conventional aircraft to maintain flight. At this altitude, a conventional plane would need to reach orbital velocity or risk falling back to Earth.

• The Kármán line was named after aerospace pioneer Theodore von Kármán.

• The world governing body for aeronautic and astronautic records, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), and many other organizations use the Kármán Line as a way of determining when space flight has been achieved.

• But, as per the U.S. military and NASA, space starts 12 miles below the Kármán Line, at 50 miles above Earth’s surface.

(Source: Indian Express and NOAA)