Interesting Facts

4th October 1957: The Russian satellite, Sputnik was launched into space. Becoming the first man-made object ever to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

28th April 1789 – Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors were set adrift and the rebel crew returned to Tahiti briefly and then set sail for Pitcairn Island. The incident became known as the Mutiny on the Bounty. 1920 – Azerbaijan was added to the Soviet Union. (I collect stamps and coins, not countries). 1932 – A vaccine for yellow fever was announced for use on humans. 1945 – Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement. 1949 – Former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, 61, was assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and 10 other people were also killed. 1952 – The United States occupation of Japan ended. 1965 – United States troops landed in the Dominican Republic to "forestall establishment of a Communist dictatorship" and to evacuate U.S. Army troops. 1970 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally au...

20th February 1962 - John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. 1986 - The Soviets launched the Mir space station.

Astronomers in Belgium have dedicated a constellation to David Bowie. (The constellation will be called Starman, as it is made up of seven stars that, when connected, form the iconic lightning bolt seen on the cover of Bowie's Aladdin Sane album. Appropriately the seven stars — Sigma Librae, Spica, Alpha Virginis, Zeta Centauri, SAA 204 132, and the Beta Sigma Octantis Trianguli Australis, form the newly named constellation in the vicinity of Mars.)

The European Space Agency has announced a New Year resolution.  It plans to build a ‘moon village’ within the next two decades from which it will explore the galaxy. (They plan to build a 3D-printed base on the moon from a naturally-occurring radiation-resistant moon material called regolith. The ‘village’ would most likely be built on the rim of a south pole crater called Shackleton, where it would receive almost limitless solar power. They first discussed plans to build a lunar base in 2013, but it has now developed a timetable for the plans and has set 2030 as its goal. I'm not sure if this blog will continue until then, but watch this space.)

We have a saying in the UK, "Every man needs a shed", and according to a survey carried out by Big Yellow Self Storage, men in the UK spend an average of 24 days a year in their shed. (Psychologist Anjula Mutanda said: ‘It’s important for men to have a space where they can be alone and uninterrupted, tinker with their collections and indulge in hobbies.’  (Is that what you call it?) We only have a small garden, so poor hubby doesn't have a shed. He has a whole cellar though.)

According to research by Big Yellow Self Storage, the average man in the UK argues once a week with their partner about how much stuff they have and the amount of space it takes up. (The answer may be to have less stuff, but as anyone knows from our recent ESL drama sessions, space is important.)  Stuff vs things.

A new space company called Golden Spike is planning to offer private trips to the moon before 2020. (The company is run by former Nasa bosses and will use rocket technology that has already been developed. The cost?  A cool £871million!) Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

According to quarterly magazine Delayed Gratification, to date 531 people have travelled into space. (The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight varies, but The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) defines spaceflight as any flight over 100 kilometres (62 miles) high. This definition is recognized by most countries.  Funnily there's a list of 528 people on Wiki, but the edition of the magazine I read listed 531 people.  I managed to find a copy of the original PDF, but can't read the font and I'm not sure who the extra 3 people are.  Anyone with better eyesight is welcome to look.) PDF Here

The Kepler space telescope has confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system. ( Spinning around its (sun like) star about 600 light years away, Kepler-22b is 2.4 times the size of the Earth, putting it in a class known as "super-Earths", and has a year of 290 days.   The near-surface temperature is presumed to be about 22 degrees Celsius, but don't pack your bags just yet, as scientists do not know whether the planet is rocky, gaseous or liquid, so you wouldn't know what to pack - diving gear, climbing gear or breathing apparatus. Kepler is NASA's first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours, and cost the US space agency about $US600 million, but it has already uncovered 1,094 more potential planets.   They aren't the only ones looking of course, French astronomers this year confirmed the first rocky exoplanet to meet key requirements for sustaining life.  To infinity and beyond!  Co...

As if satellites weren't enough, we now have a speeding ball of rock hurtling past the Earth tonight. (The asteroid, romantically called Yu55, is about a quarter of a mile wide! It will pass inside the moon's orbit and come within 198,000 miles (319,000km) of Earth at 23.28GMT. Astronomers say this is the closest a tracked object this size has come to the planet, but it will pose no threat to the earth - this time. Seemingly, it's a regular visitor and there is a a one in 10m chance of its hitting Earth in the next century. Were it to strike, the collision would unleash the equivalent of several thousand megatonnes of TNT. Not to worry folks. We came in with a bang, but we'll probably go out with a whimper.)

Today, 23rd September 2011, a huge, 6 ton satellite (the size of a bus), may crash into earth at 18,000 mph. (The satellite was launched in 1991 by the space shuttle Discovery, it was decommissioned 2005.  Nasa has warned there could be a 500-mile trail of debris, and, according to the Guardian, calculations put the British Isles within the impact path.  The odds of being hit by a piece of flying debris are 3,201 against, but this means you are 4,000 times more likely to be hit by space debris, than to win the National Lottery in the UK.  Cheerful thought.) Update - it crashed into the ocean off the US coast, so anyone who clicked on "scary", you can relax now - until the next time.  :)

Russian engineers announced plans to put a hotel into orbit 200 miles above Earth by 2016. (A four-room, so called Hotel in the Heavens, will house up to seven guests who will be able to watch us mere mortals, as our planet turns beneath them. However it will cost them; space tourists will have to fork out £500,000 to travel on a Soyuz rocket to get to the hotel before stumping up a further £100,000 for a five-day stay. I suggest they get told it will cost them £1 million pounds to get back down.) Source

Experts from the University of Bern in Switzerland, believe that the Earth was originally orbited by two moons. (The researchers are attempting to explain why the far side of the Moon has a thick, mountainous crust while the near side is flat. The mountainous far side of the moon:- The smoother near side of the moon:- The theory is that the smaller moon was absorbed into the larger when they smashed together in slow motion, around 4.4 billion years ago.

The last American space shuttle flight rolled to a stop at 5:58 a.m.

The space shuttle program cost American taxpayers $93 each year. (Over the years the United States has spent $196 billion on the space shuttle program over its lifespan. The total cost of the program over its life was supposed to be $90 billion for up to 50 launches per year. The highest number of shuttle launches in any one year was only nine. With the retirement of the shuttles, the space station will now rely on Russian, European and Japanese rockets to bring up supplies, and now, without its own shuttle program, NASA will have to spend $64 million per astronaut per trip to hitch a ride on a Russian spacecraft.) Source

You could fit the entire human race in the volume of a sugar cube. (The human body is made up of atoms, and these atoms are practically empty. Imagine an atom the size of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, a grain of sand inside it would make up the nucleus of the atom and the rest of the space would be a void. So, if you squeezed all the space out of the atoms that make up all the humans on earth you would be able to fit the entire human race in the volume of a sugar cube. Tom Stoppard, the playwright, described it like this, "If the nucleus is like the altar of St Paul's cathedral, an electron is like a moth in the cathedral, one moment by the altar, the next by the dome.") Source: BBC's The Story of Science - 2 / 6

Census bosses in Serbia have included a new section for extraterrestrials to declare their presence in an upcoming population questionnaire. (Space visitors will be able to list themselves as ETs/aliens but will not have to give details of their sex, religion or ethnicity, confirmed the country’s Statistical Office. Would you tick the alien box? xx)

A team of scientists at the University of California, have found a new planet outside our solar system that has the potential to support life. (The planet, called Gliese 581g, orbits a red dwarf star and is roughly three times the mass of Earth and only around 20 light years away. Of course a light year is 9,460,528,410,545,436.2688 meters, or 5,878,625,373,184 miles, so it might take a bit of time to get there.)

A new telescope facility in Hawaii is searching for asteroids and comets which could threaten Earth. (The telescope, Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1), has a huge digital camera: 1,400 megapixels (1.4 gigapixels). It can photograph an area of the sky as large as 36 full Moons in a single exposure. Do you feel safer now?)