Today’s the 22nd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Pluto and Russia have almost the exact same area. 

There are enough galaxies in the universe for each person to own 24 of them.

Even crazier:

There would still be plenty of galaxies left over even if every person who has ever lived owned one.

There are 67 moons in our solar system on which a 90 mph fastball could escape the gravitational field. 

Humanity has built enough roads to cover the distance from the earth to the moon over 80 times*.

* This value will change - Wolfram|Alpha calculates the moon’s current distance from the Earth, which varies as it moves through its monthly orbit. 

It takes around 8 minutes and 11 seconds for light to reach the Earth from the Sun.

The sun is really, really large. 

A satellite NASA has been watching closely, UARS, is the size of a bus and is going to fall out of the sky. UARS, which has been orbiting Earth since 1991 is decaying, and NASA says that this satellite will re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled fashion most likely sometime on Friday. Due to the large size of the satellite, some pieces are expected to survive re-entry and land somewhere on Earth. Because of the uncertainty as to exactly when re-entry will happen, it is unclear where any such pieces might land, but current predictions favor the Eastern Hemisphere so the U.S. will probably miss the show. NASA estimates a 1 in 3200 chance of human casualties from any surviving debris. Although this is no cause for concern, the light show from the re-entry could be impressive if it’s timed right. It could be bright enough to see in daylight! 

Wolfram|Alpha can show you the current position of UARS: 

In the last week, several groups of sunspots on the Sun have been very active and unleashed 3 separate solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) aimed in the general direction of Earth.

The first of these was weak and had little effect on us, but the next two were much more powerful, nearly at the peak of the solar flare scale. Scientific analysis has indicated that the two CMEs still headed towards Earth may have merged into one big cloud which is due to hit us sometime today. The exact time of impact is unknown, but if the conditions are favorable, there could be significant geomagnetic activity sometime in the next 24 hours. It could happen in the next few minutes or could be hours away.

Space Shuttle Atlantis began the final United States Space Shuttle mission this morning in Florida! Using Wolfram|Alpha, you can look back at Atlantis’ 25 years.

Wolfram|Alpha has logs of all the previous missions for Atlantis with crew member data and all the orbital info too! Look back at the first mission for Atlantis STS 51J.

What do you think about the future of the Space Program? Would you be interested in commercial space travel?

[Photo @NASAKennedy, twitpic]