Is The Great Wall of China Visible from Space or Not

Great Wall of China is one of the seven world wonders. There are many amazing and unbelievable stories roaming about this wonder. Some of them are true  while many of them still needs research.

In today’s post, we’ll talk about a very famous space-based story which is considered to be true by a majority of the people in the world.

Almost everyone of us is familiar with the claim that the Great Wall of China is one of the few man-made objects that can be seen from the space with the naked human eye. Is it true? If yes, do we have any proof? If no, whats the reality? We’ll try to answer these questions but at first let us give you some basic information about the Great Wall of China.

Great Wall of China

Image credit: Flickr gmetrail

Name: Great Wall of China (Officially “The Great Wall”, also known as The Long Wall of 10,000)

Location: China Of course

Size: 21,196 Kilometers

Constructed during the 8th century BC to 14th century AD.

Purpose of wall: Border controls, transportation corridors, defense against the predators.

Is it visible from space?

The answer is No. The actual claim was that the Great Wall is visible from space or moon but many astronauts have busted this myth.

The Great Wall is barely visible from the lower earth orbit (160 Kilometers) only under specific weather conditions because the wall’s color is just same as soil. Many astronauts including Niel Armstrong tried to view the Great Wall from Apollo 11 but he didn’t see a single sign of the wall. Later he stated that:

“I do not believe that, at least with my eyes, there would be any man-made object that I could see. I have not yet found somebody who has told me they’ve seen the Wall of China from Earth orbit. …I’ve asked various people, particularly Shuttle guys, that have been many orbits around China in the daytime, and the ones I’ve talked to didn’t see it.”

Once again this claim is proved to be a myth when we talk about its visibility from moon. According to the experts, to view the Great Wall from moon is just like you try to view a human hair from a distance of 2 miles.

So, according to all these statements and proofs, the Great Wall of China is not visible from space but the wall is still great and will remain as a world’s wonder.