Rested in the Pacific Ocean, Mauna Kea's peak rises above the bulk of our planet's dense atmosphere, where conditions allow telescopes to obtain images of unsurpassed clarity.
Then the craft's reentry went wrong. The guidance system failed and they had to steer manually, bumping down in a snowy forest 1,600km from the landing site.
The advantage of intercepting sunlight in space, instead of letting it find its own way through the atmosphere, is that so much gets absorbed by the air.
During totality, where the moon is completely inside Earth’s umbra, a tiny bit of the sun’s light is bent through our atmosphere and comes out the other side, like a ring-shaped lens.
The fireball that blew up 16 miles over the earth's surface in December was the second most powerful one to enter our atmosphere in 30 years according to the space agency.
As it makes its decent, they both melt into a raindrop as it's entering the lower levels of the atmosphere sleet will refreeze into basically an ice pellet.