YEAR’S END: With this year coming to an end, agencies and organizations are taking stock of what happened in 2017.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful recently announced the results of its 2017 Great American Cleanup of PA that ran from March 1 through May 31.
“The event engaged 132,695 invaluable volunteers in 7,280 events across the state that focused on community greening, beautification and cleanups,” the organization stated.
It reported that volunteers picked up more than 5 million pounds of trash and grew 16,437 plants.
Registration for the 2018 cleanup will open in January. Events registered through www.gacofpa.org will receive free bags, gloves and vests from district offices of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
At NASA, the agency called 2017 “a year of groundbreaking discoveries and record-setting exploration.”
NASA summarized the year so, “The Moon became a focal point for the agency, we brought you unique coverage of the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in the U.S. in 99 years, we announced the most Earth-size planets ever found in the habitable zone of a star outside our solar system, and more!”
The Aug. 21 solar eclipse had people across the U.S. looking up at the moon.
“It was one of the biggest internet events in recent history and the biggest online event NASA has ever measured,” NASA stated.
The long list of the agency’s projects this year includes:
• Cassini spacecraft’s 13-year tour of Saturn came to an end when it plunged into the planet’s atmosphere.
• Voyager 1 and 2 celebrated 40 years of exploration, making the still ongoing mission the farthest and longest.
• The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the first light tied to a gravitational-wave event.
• The Spitzer Space Telescope found the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star.
• NASA-funded Pan-STARRS1 telescope spotted the first confirmed object to travel through our solar system from another star.
• OSIRIS-REx successfully used Earth’s gravity to slingshot itself toward the asteroid Bennu, with scientists hoping for a rendezvous between the spacecraft and asteroid in summer 2018.
• NASA continued to progress toward eventually sending astronauts to Mars.
