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.

As well as being a holiday here in the UK, today is Star Wars Day (yes, simply because of the bad pun I’m afraid). So here’s a roundup of some Star Wars related sights!

First up is Star Wars Path near Atlanta, Georgia. There’s a road sign too, but it isn’t really legible on Street View. What I don’t know however, is how it got its name?

In the original Star Wars movie the spaceport of Mos Eisley was on the planet Tatooine, but in fact it was filmed here at Matmata in Tunisia. Some interior scenes were even filmed in the underground homes of the people who live here, who these days make good money from charging tourists to take pictures.

Last week on Twitter we just happened to see these rather unconvincing-looking portraits of some Star Wars characters, that form part of an otherwise impressive piece of French graffiti.

Does anyone know of other Star Wars themed sights that we can visit today?

Thanks to Keir Clarke and Virtual Globe Trotting.

Clipperton Island, one of the most remote land masses on earth, is an uninhabited coral atoll under French authority, located in the Eastern Pacific Ocean approximately 1,120 kilometres south west of Mexico.

The island was named for John Clipperton, an English pirate who visited the island briefly in the 18th century and may have used it to hide treasure… which so far has never been found!¹

12 kilometres in diameter, the ring-shaped island completely encloses a stagnant freshwater lagoon with many deep basins. One of these, known as “the bottomless hole,” contains an extremely high concentration of sulphuric acid, making Clipperton a less than desirable vacation destination.

Add to that a severe lack of fresh water and an abundance of poisonous land crabs – and Clipperton Island shapes up to be the perfect location for an evil super-villain’s island fortress of doom!

Though uninhabited today, at its peak around 1914 Clipperton was home to a group of 100 men, women and children, and was the site of a booming guano-mining² operation.

Only three years later, only 10 women and children remained – thanks to a lack of supplies and a homicidal lighthouse keeper. Since then the island has only been visited periodically by French military patrols and the occasional scientific expedition.

Yes people, it’s finally here. UK Street View has arrived. We will update this post as news develops! UK news agencies looking for comment can get in touch via our contact form

Street View has arrived here in the UK at long last, and Google have given us imagery in many parts of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Additionally, Street View is now available in the Netherlands for the first time, and while they were at it, Google has added several new cities in France and Spain!

Coverage is extensive, and covers all of the UK’s major cities. Both of the GSS HQs in Edinburgh and Oxford have coverage, and London has an absolutely staggering number of blue lined streets!

In Edinburgh the images appear to have been taken mainly during the Edinburgh Festival, which explains why there’s lots of odd looking people around.¹ You can see the seating for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in place on the Castle Esplanade.

Here’s London’s seat of power, Downing Street, showing off their awesome security measures, which has been captured alongside all of the other standard tourist sights like the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

In Belfast, it seems that the famous Northern Irish political murals aren’t safe from Google’s face-blurring software!

The Netherlands has also received a large helping of Street View today with coverage of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Here’s the “Coffee Shop Extase” and Sex Museum:

Other reports are coming in of new Street View imagery in France (including Calais and Le Havre), Spain (including expanded coverage or Barcelona), Northern Italy, and expanded coverage in numerous US states.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest news, and new Street Views throughout the day.

Google Maps Mania has a good selection of London sights to see, but what else have you found?

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of our first foreign language translations of Google Sightseeing, when we launched Google Sightseeing Français translated by Julien Gremillot, and Google Sightseeing Italiano translated by Alexei Popov.

Many congratulations to Julien and Alexei, who have both now translated more posts than there are days in the year!

Since then both sites have grown considerably – proving very popular with their readers, and both Julien and Alexei have started writing their own unique posts too.

In addition to French and Italian now have Google Sightseeing Deutsch translated by Jenni and Joel Fuchs, who are working really hard to bring Google Sightseeing to the German speaking world, and Google Sightseeing Nederlands which has been recently re-launched by the able team of Karel Gillissen and Willem Hage.

Recent highlights of our translators doing their own posts have been Julien’s French version of our Top 10 Rudest Place Names in Britain, entitled Top 10 des noms de villes grossiers en France, and the Jenni and Joel’s rude German version – Top 10 Unanständigste Ortsamen in Deutschland.

Of course we’re not done with our quest to bring satellite sightseeing to the world! Over at Google Sightseeing Español we’re currently looking for a new Spanish writer to continue the excellent work Eduardo Moreno began and If you’re a GSS reader who is fluent in a language other than English, perhaps you’d like to get involved? We’d love to hear from you if you think there’s a case for bringing Google Sightseeing to your mother tongue!