On the 1st of February 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia tragically broke up on re-entry killing all seven astronauts on board.

However, here it is, seemingly unscathed in a Canadian field!

It turns out that is actually a full-scale model of Columbia at the “Great Island Science and Adventure Park”. It’s claimed that this is one of only such six replicas¹ and the only that claims (rather insensitively) to let you experience “how the astronauts lived”.

But it’s doubtful that the experience will be very authentic, as this replica wasn’t built from any designs, instead being based on a 1/72 plastic scale model kit and a “large number of books”.

Further information on the Science park homepage².

Thanks to Karl M S.

As 2007 draws to a close we present our choices for the best posts of the year.

Best Mystery

There were numerous contenders for the most confusing or bizarre images, but our pick is the Mystery Plane Outline, as even the generally accepted answer, that these are small rocks arranged in the shape of a plane, still begs the question: “But why bother?”.

Best personal project

In February we were impressed with one man’s attempt to single-handedly recreate a cruise ship in his front drive.

Lamest World Record

The Largest Wooden ship in the world from April easily wins this prize, due to having a less-than-exciting title and the fact that the specially built ship has never even been in the water!

A special mention also goes to the German towns squabbling over who has the most unintentionally leaning building.

Our Brains Hurt Award

Getting our heads around the Island and Lake recursion from September’s Island Week 2 was almost too much, but I think we get it now…

Best Smallest Thing

We loved the idea of the world’s smallest parks from January, but the world’s smallest municipal park was just too darn small to see from satellite! Fortunately, Google now have a street view shot of it.

Best World’s Most Enlarged Thing

In the last year we’ve featured many, many sights that claim to be the “World’s largest something” but our pick for the Best Largest something is the World’s largest fingerprint.

Best Imagery

Undoubtedly the most amazing images to be found in Google Earth are the African Megaflyover project aerial shots, and the best of these images were highlighted in November’s Google Sightseeing Safari.

Best Blurry Pictures

Some of the aerial images in Google Earth are amazingly high resolution, but not high enough for our tour of miniature parks across the globe, which ended up as a list of blurry blobs that sort-of look like the Eiffel tower.

Best Landart

The ancient Incan geoglyph of a cat is fantastic, and much more intersting and attractive than kfc’s logo stunt.

Most Ignored Warning

A few days after we posted this year’s April fools joke: “Live Satellite Images in Google Earth” we updated the entry with a banner warning users that it was a prank and there are no live images to be seen. Did anyone read that? Of course not! We still get a new message almost every week from someone who fell for the joke and wants to know where the live images are.

Most In-Depth Post

For a long time it had no decent imagery, so during Island Week this year we really went to town on our Easter Island post, and managed to condense 2,000 years of history into a mere 600 words.

Best Large Type

The rooftop message “Welcome to Cleveland” isn’t very interesting at first glance, until you realise that the message is over 400 miles away in Milwaukee!

So that’s our picks of the year, but with over 250 entries in 2007, what were your favourites?

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2008 - see you all next year!

I think no-one can doubt that aliens have definitely landed!

Both of these spacecraft are located in farmland outside the Romanian city of Timisoara. Romania is not known as a major UFO hotspot, but to our alien overlords Roswell is probably passé¹.

That said, this isn’t the first sighting of our visitors to Romania: the Romanian UFO Network² have hundreds of blurry pictures of similar looking craft (or clouds).

So, UFO sceptics, do you have another explanation of what we’re seeing here?

Thanks to tomhet4ever, DocMartini & kjfitz.

12.5 metres (41 feet) in length, hyperspace capable, and with a top speed of 5,025 mph in atmosphere, the X-wing is of course the iconic starfighter first seen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, all the way back in ‘77.

Although why the Rebel Alliance have left this one smack bang in the middle of Disneyland Paris is a complete mystery…

More on the X-wing at Wikipedia. Thanks to virtualglobetrotting.

(It’s Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.)

Located in the south eastern Pacific Ocean, almost four thousand kilometers from continental Chile, Easter Island - or locally Rapa Nui - is one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands¹, as well as one of the world’s most fascinating archaeological sites.

Photo of Rano Raraku Moai from mappic.org

The human history of Easter Island probably began somewhere between AD 300 and 1200 when people from the islands west of here landed with the tools, animals and provisions to stay for good. Although only 171 km² in area, at the time Easter Island had extensive forests, and the volcanic craters held drinking water - which is an important feature on an island with no rivers.

Rano Kau volcano (Picture)

Somewhere between AD 1000 and 1500, the Rapanui began a period of frantic construction of enormous stone statues - the Moai, for which Easter Island is world famous today. These enigmatic figures represented the islander’s deified ancestors, and were mostly placed near the coast, with their backs to the sea.

Moai of Ahu Nau Nau, Anakena Beach (Picture)

Moai are hewn from the island’s volcanic rock², and the largest Moai erected was almost 10 metres high and weighed 75 tonnes; their production and transportation is considered a remarkable accomplishment.

Moai of Ahu Tongariki (Picture)

887 Moai have been identified to date, however only a quarter ever made it to one of the coastal Ahu platforms - nearly half of all Moai remain at a single site called Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater where 95% were originally carved. The landscape is littered with 397 Moai - some half-finished, some semi-submerged in the earth through erosion, and others never even detached from the rock.³

Rano Raraku crater, Rano Raraku Moai (Picture)

By the time explorers arrived here in the 18th Century, the forests of the island had completely disappeared. It’s unknown whether or not the Rapanui had used all the trees in the construction of the Moai, or if some other ecological factor was involved, but either way the islanders were now trapped - there was no longer any wood available for making seaworthy canoes.

After this things began to go rapidly downhill for the inhabitants of Easter Island. There followed a period of tribal wars, raids by Peruvian slavers, epidemics of European diseases, and the conversion of the entire island into a sheep farm. During this period much Rapa Nui culture was lost forever, nearly all of the Moai were deliberately toppled (probably by warring tribal factions), and by the late 19th century only 111 of the indigenous people remained alive.

Somehow, against all the odds, today there are several thousand descendants of the surviving 111 Rapanui living on Easter Island - which now has sustainable forestry and the longest runway in Polynesia (having been extended to function as an emergency landing place for the U.S. Space Shuttle). The Moai have returned too - many have been re-erected on their Ahus around the island and one has even been given new eyes.

Moai at Ahu Akivi, unusual in not being on the coast, and facing towards the sea (Picture)

Read more about Easter Island and Moai at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Josh, Adam, Reinhold and Didier.

Remember how excited everybody got when we thought Australians were all driving flying cars? Well here in Arkansas, blazing down the I-30 towards Little Rock, we find . . . a Rocket-Powered Car!

This couldn’t be anything other than some crazy genius driving a four-wheeled rocket along the interstate, as it quite clearly has massive flames shooting out the back.

Thanks to Julian.

For once no-one can try to cover up the truth - this is no water tower, no dirt on the lens, and no weather anomaly! Nope, this time we’ve found a real, actual, honest-to-goodness UFO landing on a building in Utrecht, Netherlands! We even managed to find a picture that was taken during the invasion.

Well, it’s a real sculpture of a UFO. That counts, right?

Thanks to P wouterse, Bor Smulders and Ronald.

Although the Soviet Buran space program only ever achieved in a single orbital flight, we’ve found a surprising number of space shuttles on Google Earth.

We started with images of a structural test shuttle and then the abandoned follow-up model and today we present the OK-GLI, an aero test model which completed 25 aero test flights and 9 taxi tests.

According to Wikipedia the OK-GLI’s post-Soviet life began with a stint as a museum in Sydney before being offered up for auction in Los Angeles and then finally ending up here in Bahrain, wasting away. A German company purchased the shuttle in 2005 but the legal wranglings mean it has yet to be transported away from this scrapyard.

Full list of Buran space vehicles on Wikipedia (Can you find any others?).

Thanks: Chilla