HOW FAST DO SPACE ROCKETS GO?

      Rockets have to go faster than 11 kilometers per second to get into space. This works out to about 40,000 kilometers per hour - and car drivers can get into trouble for speeding at 120 kilometer per hour! If rockets didn't travel so fast they wouldn't be able to escape the enormously strong pull of Earth's gravity.

• Rockets are made up of two or three parts called stages. Each stage is a giant fuel tank and engine, which separates and falls away as soon as its fuel is used up.
•  At the top of the rocket is its payload - a satellite, a robot space probe, or a spacecraft carrying astronauts.

   Rockets are mainly used to put machines called satellites into orbit around the earth. Different sorts of satellite are launched to do many different jobs.