For the first time ever, China has launched more rockets into orbit in a year than the U.S. In 2011, the Chinese sent 19 rockets into space. The U.S. sent just 18. Russia, the Walmart of space launches, fired off no fewer than 31 rockets. …Beijing is not about to catch up to Washington in …
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How big is Jupiter’s moon Io? The most volcanic body in the Solar System, Io (usually pronounced “EYE-oh”) is 3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of planet Earth’s Moon. Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the millennium, the Cassini spacecraft captured this awe inspiring view of active Io with the largest gas giant …
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A globular cluster is a spherical collection of stars (like our Sun) that orbits a galactic core as a satellite. Globular clusters are very tightly bound by gravity, which gives them their spherical shapes and relatively high stellar densities toward their centers. Here is one of those globular clusters: Messier 9, seen here in a …
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On the 1-year anniversary of the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan, Google Maps updated its imagery all along the coast. This included side-by-side shots of two specific regions, the Shiogama Port and the Sanriku Bridge. The photos are: years before, days after, one month after, and a year after. The devastation is incredible, but so is …