The European Space Agency is a collaboration between 18 European states with the simple aim of “exploring space” and yesterday they announced their first new recruits to the Astronaut Corps in more than a decade.

The European Space Agency’s spaceport is Guiana Space Centre, located just off the coast of South America in French Guiana. The location is ideal for space rocket launches due to it being only 500km from the equator, which means the rockets get an extra boost from the rotation of the earth¹.

The focal point of Guiana is the Ariane rocket launcher, a 52m tall tower surrounded by four 90m high lightning rods. The concrete foundation features three “flame trenches” to contain the fire from the launching boosters, and the adjacent water tower delivers 30,000 litres of water a second to cool the launch pad during take off.

The Ariane launcher is used frequently for launching communication satellites and science experiments. Already this year Guiane has launched two Ariane-5 rockets, the most recent of which was just last week, when the Herschel Space Observatory was put into orbit.

In fact, demand for satellite launches at Guiane is so great that the former Ariane-1 launch site has been adapted for launching Vega, the ESA’s new small-size launcher.

Elsewhere on the compound we also find the Booster Engine Test Stand, a 200m long, 60m deep pit where boosters can be safely fired.

There’s plenty more to explore at Guiana, I recommend turning on the Google Earth Community layer to see information about all the different buildings.

The six new recruits to the Astronaut Corps will certainly have their time to explore, as their rigourous training is leading up to a first space journey in 2013 at the earliest.

NASA’s first visitor centre, and one of the world’s largest public collections of space bits is the U.S. Space and Rocket Center near Huntsville, AL.

The main building houses hundreds of space-related artefacts, including bits of real moon rock and the remains of a space monkey, but luckily the best sights are too large to squeeze inside the building and have to be displayed outside¹.

Welcoming you to the centre is an A-12 Blackbird which, as I’m sure you know, isn’t a spacecraft, it’s a plane. But, it’s a very cool plane, so we’ll let them off².

Also noticeable from the entrance is the massive Saturn V, the rocket design that launched NASA’s Apollo and Skylab missions.

However, like the Blackbird, this isn’t a spacecraft; it’s just a full-size mock-up produced especially for the park.

Hoping to actually see some real space things, we come to another Saturn V, this time lying down.

Now this is (sort of) the real deal. Although all three stages come from separate test models not destined for flight, it does have all the inner workings and has thus been awarded the prestigious status of a US national monument.

Alongside Saturn V stands a smaller rocket, Saturn I, which was NASA’s first dedicated “space launcher”.

Again, this particular rocket was never launched, and like the Saturn V is actually a mish-mash of test models. Someone who clearly knows too much about space rockets complains that the booster is even painted incorrectly: “the roll pattern on the fins is also off, as the black-white boundary should be horizontal to the ground an[d] bisecting the root edge of the fins.” Of course we all noticed that glaring error.

Around the other side of the building we find the only “full stack” space shuttle display in the US.

The empty steel model, known as “Pathfinder”, was constructed as an simple weight for testing cranes and other support equipment. It was given the NASA livery in Japan, where it spent some time at the “Great Space Shuttle Exposition” of 1984.

It then returned to America to where we see it now, sitting atop two prototype booster casings which never went into production.

So that was the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, where we can see precisely zero rockets that have ever actually been into space!

Our first post from Kyrgyzstan is evidence of alien visitation to Earth!

While skeptics may dismiss this as some image artifact or tape used to hold different images together, the presence of an image ghost (previously explained on Google Sightseeing) give definitive proof that this has to be an airborne object of unearthly origin.

What’s more it leaves a some kind of vapour trail for more than 90km over Lake Issyk Kul, while its companion craft is found to the south east, just about to pass over the lake.

Thanks to Ryan Bowman and SpongeJim.

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!