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Launch videos and audio of the post-launch press conference are now available.

After the successful launch, commissioning of the spacecrfat is continuing – directed from the dedicated control room at Telespazio’s ground control centre at Fucino, in Italy. Videos of the launch and speeches by ESA personnel and guests, together with audio of the post-launch press conference held at Fucino on Sunday morning are now available.

Full launch details on the GIOVE-B website.

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2008 April 29 Airplane Flight Patterns over the USA Credit & Copyright: Aaron Koblin,FAAWhat are these Earthlings going? Millions of people move about planet Earth by airplane every day. Hundreds of thousands of airplane flightstake place over the US every day. A dramatic graphical depiction of these flights was created by Aaron Koblinand is shown above. Clicking on the above imagewill bring up a movie in many web browsers, a movie that might better be visible here.The moviedepicts flight patterns that occurred over a few days in 2005 March. The count on the lower left shows the number of flights USA-related flights at the time listed on the lower right. The trails shown are not contrails but rather generated artificially by a computer algorithm.Major cities in North America and the USA are discernable.Inspection of the movie shows that some times of the day are busier than others, indicating that flights leave some destinations at times that are convenient for travelers.In terms of distance, flying to a distant location is much safer than driving to that location. Flying in an airplane, however, remains slightly more dangerous than driving to a nearby airportpeculiar galaxies

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AP – An experimental satellite for a much-delayed European Union rival to the United States’ GPS navigation system blasted into orbit Sunday after a successful launch atop a Russian rocket, the Russian and European space agencies said.

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SPACE.com – While we may never know what it looks like inside a blackhole, astronomers recently obtained one of the closest views yet. The sightingallowed scientists to confirm theories about how these giant cosmic sinkholesspew out jets of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light.

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AFP – An Indian rocket launched a record 10 satellites into orbit in a single mission Monday, underlining the nation’s emergence as a major competitor in the multi-billion-dollar space market.

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ESA PR 25-2008 A further step towards the deployment of Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system was taken tonight, with the successful launch of ESA’s second Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element (GIOVE-B) satellite, carrying the most accurate atomic clock ever flown into space.

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SPACE.com – PARIS –Israel’s Amos-3 telecommunications satellite was placed successfully intogeostationary orbit on Monday aboard the inaugural flight of the Russian-UkrainianLand Launch system, setting the stage for what satellite-fleet operators hopewill be a lively competition between Land Launch — affiliated with SeaLaunch Co. of Long Beach, Calif. — and Russian Soyuz rockets launched fromEurope’s equatorial spaceport.

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SPACE.com – BANGALORE,India — The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) placed two domestic andeight foreign satellites in orbit Monday in what the agency said was the mostcomplex mission launched as yet by its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

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