The world’s tallest mountain is a little taller than it used to be. The new official height of Mount Everest is 29,032 feet.
Everest sits on the border between two Asian countries, China and Nepal. Since the 1950s, Nepal had claimed that the mountain was 29,028 feet above sea level, but China had said it was several feet shorter. To confuse things further, some other nations, including the U.S., had come up with different measurements. The leaders of Nepal and China decided to work together to settle the dispute once and for all.
The job of figuring out the exact height of Everest was up to surveyors—people who determine the size of pieces of land. Teams from both nations had to make the dangerous trek to the summit, or top. They carried Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. These devices use technology similar to that used by smartphones to track our exact location. The teams also took other measurements with surveying tools positioned around the mountain. Surveyors used all the data they collected to calculate the precise height. Now people who climb Mount Everest will know exactly what great heights they have reached!