What do you think of this fact?
It’s one of the most popular trivia facts of all time: the Great Wall of China is supposedly the only structure you can see from space with the naked eye. Fittingly, it was China’s first astronaut who knocked it down.
“I didn’t see the Great Wall”
In October 2003, Yang Liwei spent about 21 hours circling Earth aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft, completing 14 orbits. After landing, Chinese state television asked him about the view. It was “very beautiful”, he said. And then: “I didn’t see the Great Wall.”
The problem isn’t the length, it’s the width. The wall is only about six meters wide and roughly the same color as the ground around it. According to NASA astronauts, plenty of human-made things can be seen from low orbit, such as roads, cities and ships. The wall just isn’t an easy target.
Only with a telephoto lens
It has been photographed, though. In 2004, astronaut Leroy Chiao captured a section using a 180-millimeter lens. In 2018, Alexander Gerst managed it with an 800-millimeter telephoto lens. With the naked eye, according to Sky at Night, it’s hardly possible.
From the Moon, forget it. Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean said: “No man-made object is visible at this scale.”
Bonus fact: The idea is older than spaceflight. As early as 1754, the English clergyman William Stukeley wrote in a letter that the wall could be seen from the Moon.
So the myth was almost 250 years old by the time someone could check it in person. And the verdict came straight from the front row.