NASA has published some interesting statistics about the world’s sandy beaches on Earth Observatory webpage. According to the images taken by Landsat satellitesNotes 1 (Landsat 5 and Landsat 8Notes 2, 3), about 31 percent of the world’s coastlines are sandy. Africa has the highest proportion of sandy beaches (66 percent) and Europe has the lowest (22 percent).
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Category Archives: Space Exploration
Watch: ISS Over New Zealand
An amazing video of our beautiful Blue Marble from the International Space Station, titled “ISS over New Zealand”, published by the NASA Crew Earth Observations channel.
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NASA Has Released Apollo 11 Mission Audio
NASA has just published Two Years’ Worth of Apollo 11 Mission Audio (the first manned moon landing mission) on their website “Explore Apollo“. That’s more than 19,000 hours of audio.
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The coldest place in the Universe is now on the ISS
As soon as NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) began producing ultra-cold atoms, the International Space Station (ISS) became the coldest place in the known universe. The formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, a fifth state of matter occurred in NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) at a temperature of 130 nanoKelvin, or less than 10 billionth of a degree above Absolute Zero. Absolute zero, or zero Kelvin, is equal to minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 273 Celsius. Previously, the record-cold was achieved in Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle’s laboratory at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
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Did NASA Spent Millions of Dollars to Develop a Space Pen, While The Soviet Cosmonauts using Pencils?
Here’s the story: during the 1960s as NASA was sending the first astronauts to space, they realized that pens don’t work in zero gravity (or actually microgravity), so they spent years and many millions of taxpayer dollars to develop a “space pen”, which means a pen that can write in the microgravity. Meanwhile, the Soviet cosmonauts simply used pencils.
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Why can’t we Remake the Rocketdyne F-1 Engine, which took humans to the Moon?
The mighty Saturn V, the rocket that took humans to the moon, remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status (as of 2018). It was used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. It was powered by five Rocketdyne F-1 engines. With a thrust of 1,746,000 lbf (7,770 kN) in vacuum (1,522,000 lbf / 6,770 kN at sea level), the F-1 remains the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed.
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Watch: Amazing Time-Lapse Video Showing Earth from the ISS
European Space Agency has published an amazing time-lapse video showing the Earth from the International Space Station (ISS). The space agency wrote “Join ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst for a quick flight from the USA to Africa aboard the International Space Station in this time-lapse filmed 12.5 times faster than actual speed.” You can watch that breathtaking video below:
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Song of Saturn and Its Moon Enceladus
NASA has published an amazing video titled “Sounds of Saturn: Hear Radio Emissions of the Planet and Its Moon Enceladus”. The analyze of the data from the Cassini Spacecraft’s Grand Finale orbits showed a surprisingly powerful interaction of plasma waves moving from Saturn to its icy moon Enceladus. Researchers converted the recording of plasma waves into a “whooshing” audio file that we can hear, in the same way a radio translates electromagnetic waves into music.
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Top 18 Largest Islands on Earth
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. It is believed that there are over 100,000 islands in the world. It’s difficult to put a figure to the exact number as there are different kinds of them in various water bodies including oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. There is even an island within a lake that is situated on an island located in a lake on an island. Only 322 of them are larger than 1000 km2 (386 sq mi). Here are the top 18 largest islands on Earth. Why 18? Because this is the number of islands that have a land area of greater than 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles).
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Russian spacecraft arrived to the ISS in just 3 hours and 40 minutes
Russia’s Progress 70 resupply spacecraft set a milestone for International Space Station operations when it arrived in a record time: just three hours and 40 minutes, or only two Earth orbits (of the ISS). The uncrewed spacecraft delivered the cargo which includes 530 kg of propellant, 52 kg of oxygen gas, 420 kg of water and 1,565 kg of “dry” cargo such as food and other equipment to the space station.
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