The International Space Station- the tenth anniversary numbers

Nov. 20, 2008- today
Nov. 20, 1998- Russians launch the first component of the International Space Station from their space center in Kazakhstan.
16- number of nations supporting the space station (including NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, and 11 members of the European Space Agency, or ESA: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.)
14- number of countries that have sent crews to the space station
167- number of individuals who have crewed the station
19,000 – number of meals they have eaten in space
30- number of flights to the station by American and Russian spacecraft
114- number of spacewalks involved in the construction of the station
1 - The length of the space station in football fields
6- area of the solar energy panels in basketball courts
240- number of miles above the Earth the space station orbits
57,309- number of orbits the station made in ten years
1,432,725,000- number of miles the station has travelled (That’s about a billion and a half miles- about the distance to Uranus!)
100,000- number of people on earth involved in support for the space station
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/10th_main.html

Phoenix Obituary

The Mars lander Phoenix has apparently stopped functioning after five months of data collection. It was the northernmost landing area of any spacecraft sent to Mars. "Apparently", because the mission engineers will continue to monitor for signals sent by Phoenix, but it is likely that the recent dust storms on Mars have not allowed enough sunlight to reach its solar panels to allow the equipment to continue operation. The lander was originally intended to function for three months. The last signal was received November 2, 2008.

It was a very sophisticated remote laboratory, and among its accomplishments were confirming the presence of water-ice below the surface of Mars (it had an arm for digging into the soil), taking over 25 000 photos using the first "atomic force microscope" ever used outside the Earth, doingn chemical analysis of the martian soil, and studying martian weather, including the first ever observation of snow falling from the clouds on Mars! (See this blog September 29). All things Phoenix can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .