10. From the Space Shuttle, is the entire Earth visible at once as a big sphere? Is Earth perfectly round? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

The Space Shuttle used to fly too low for its astronauts to be able to see the whole Earth at once. But they could certainly see that the Earth is round because they can see that the horizon is curved instead of straight, and because they kept coming around it every 90 minutes! The Apollo astronauts, who went to the Moon, could see the whole Earth in their sky, just as we can see the whole Moon in our sky at night. It certainly looks perfectly round, but precise measurements show that it is slightly flattened at the poles.

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Answer provided by Derek Webber

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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