• A space station
• A space shuttle
• A permanent base on the moon
• A manned mission to Mars

According to a new study, the inner core of Earth spins nine-thousandths of a second faster than outer layers of the Earth, which may be responsible for the Earth's magnetic field.

Every second, the Sun converts about 700 million tons of hydrogen to 695 million tons of helium and 386 billion billion megawatts of energy (see also e=mc² fact). It's been doing this for about 4.5 billion years and will keep going for another 5 billion years before growing to a red giant and gobbling up the Earth.

"2003 UB313" could be bigger than Pluto and is probably twice the distance from the Sun. See the fact about the relationship between days of the week and the planets.

As a result, his full salutation is Prof. Dr. Michael Griffin BSc,MSc,MEng,MBA,Ph.D!

What's the old NASA adminstrator doing? Running Lousiana State University according to an old FactMe! fact.

1st orbital spacecraft, Sputnik
1st spacecraft to carry an animal (a dog Laika), Sputnik 2
1st spacecraft to reach another celestial body, Luna 2
1st spacecraft to photograph the far side of the moon, Luna 3
1st spacecraft to land safely on another planet, Venera 7
1st manned spacecraft, Vostok 1, which carried the ...
1st human into space (Yuri Gagarin)

NASA's robotic space explorers, the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, have survived for a full Martian year (687 Earth days) on the red planet! When Spirit first landed on Jan. 3, 2004, scientists hoped that the rovers would last 90 sols, a Martian days which is just a few minutes longer than an Earth day.

The Lunar Module from the Apollo missions required less computer power to land on the moon than today's average cellphone!

There are gold-plated records flying away from Earth towards aliens on both the NASA Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft (launched in 1977). These contain information on finding our Solar System and planet, images of culture and diversity on Earth, and greetings in a LOT of different languages. How to actually communicate with aliens.

These craft passed Pluto in 1990 and are now roughly 8 billion miles from the sun (90 times farther than the Earth).

Using its 94.5-inch primary mirror, Hubble transmits about 120 gigabytes of data every week! This mirror is such a smooth curve that if it was scaled up to the diameter of the Earth, the largest bump would only be 6 inches tall.

Take a look at some of the beautiful pictures Hubble has brought us!

Commercial airplanes descend for landing at a "glide slope" of approximately 3 degrees, while the space shuttle glide slope is angled at 20 degrees or more. Four minutes before touching down, the shuttle is still piloted by computer and moving faster than the speed of sound.

Check out Astronomy Picture of the Day for pictures!

In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates.

In terms of distance, if Earth was a pea, Pluto would a mile and a half away!

On January 11, 2006, NASA is scheduled to launch the New Horizons mission. It should reach the planet, which is only 1/150th the volume of Earth, by mid-2015. After completing the 3-billion mile journey, the spacecraft will map Pluto and Charon, its moon.

Starting with Apollo 11 in 1969 ("One small step for man...") and ending with Apollo 17 in 1972, NASA fulfilled the vision that Jules Verne had speculated about over 100 years ago!

It will swing by the Earth again in either 2035 or 2036, and scientists predict it has a small chance of hitting the planet on this pass.

Several variants of this do occur in the series, such as "Beam me aboard," or "Two to beam up", but "Beam me up, Scotty" was never said during the run of the original Star Trek series.

The movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home included the closest other variation: "Scotty, beam me up."

Earth's atmosphere has no sharp boundary or upper edge. But 99% of it does lie below about 30 kilometers (19 miles). Air pressure and density continue to decrease as altitude increases and the atmosphere dwindles into the near vacuum of space.

The lowest satellite orbit is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) up. At this altitude, there is virtually no drag from air molecules to slow the satellite. In order for a satellite to remain over the same part of the earth (like a weather or TV satellite), it needs to be in a geostationary orbit (22,240 miles above the earth!)

Its presence is required to explain the extra gravitational force that is observed to hold regular galaxies together and that also binds large clusters of galaxies. These galaxies are rotatating too quickly to be explained by the observed amount of gas. Something else must serve as gravitational glue.

Dark matter makes up about 23 percent of the universe's mass-energy budget. Normal matter, the stuff of stars, planets and people, contributes just 4 percent -- similar to the grain of sand fact.

Or check out a 8400x3300 px image of saturn and other interesting facts

The names of the seven days of the week were based on the names of the celestial objects originally considered to be planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

There will not be a full moon on Halloween until the year 2020.