Atmosphere of Earth and balloons, and too low to permit orbital spacecraft. The mesosphere is mainly accessed by sounding rockets and rocket-powered aircraft. The stratosphere is the second-lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. It lies above the troposphere and is separated from it by the tropopause. This layer extends from the top of the troposphere at roughly above Earth's surface to the stratopause at an altitude of about . The atmospheric pressure at the top of the stratosphere is roughly 1/1000 the pressure at sea level. It contains the ozone layer, which is the part of Earth's atmosphere that contains relatively high concentrations of
Atmosphere of the Moon and potassium, which are not found in the atmospheres of Earth, Mars, or Venus. At sea level on Earth, each cubic centimeter of the atmosphere contains approximately molecules; by comparison the lunar atmosphere contains fewer than molecules in the same volume. On Earth, this is considered to be a very good vacuum. In fact, the density of the atmosphere at the Moon's surface is comparable to the density of the outermost fringes of Earth's atmosphere, where the International Space Station orbits. The elements sodium and potassium have been detected in the Moon's atmosphere using Earth-based spectroscopic methods, whereas the isotopes