Collaborate Disseminate
Skywatchers say Kosmos 482, which was designed to withstand the harsh environment of Venus, will likely land on Earth intact. Continue reading A Defunct Soviet Venus Probe Will Crash Into Earth After Decades in Orbit
A MIPT team is building prototype observatories over the coming weeks in Amderma, Nenets Autonomous Region. Continue reading Scientists Want to Monitor Space Debris from Warming Russian Arctic
Back in April we reported on the successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station which carried, along with supplies and experiments for the orbiting outpost, the RemoveDEBRIS spacecraft. Developed by the University of Surrey, RemoveDEBRIS was designed as the world’s first practical demonstration of what’s known as Active Debris Removal (ADR) technology. It included not only a number of different technologies for ensnaring nearby objects, it even brought along deployable targets to use them on.
Orbital debris (often referred to simply as “space junk”) is a serious threat to all space-faring nations, and has …read more
On April 2nd, 2018 a Falcon 9 rocketed skywards towards the International Space Station. The launch itself went off without a hitch, and the Dragon spacecraft delivered its payload of supplies and spare parts. But alongside the usual deliveries, CRS-14 brought a particularly interesting experiment to the International Space Station.
Developed by the University of Surrey, RemoveDEBRIS is a demonstration mission that aims to test a number of techniques for tackling the increasingly serious problem of “space junk”. Earth orbit is filled with old spacecraft and bits of various man-made hardware that have turned some areas of space into a …read more
The Humanity Star is a poetic and entirely useless satellite. For astronomers, however, it’s a pain in the ass. Continue reading Astronomers Are Annoyed at a New Zealand Company That Launched a Disco Ball Into Orbit
Who has dibs on space debris? If getting to it were a solved problem, it sure would be fun to use dead orbital hardware as something of a hacker’s junk bin. Turns out there is some precedent for this, and regulations already in place in the international community.
To get you into the right frame of mind: it’s once again 2100 AD and hackers are living in mile-long space habitats in the Earth-Moon system. But from where do those hackers get their raw material, their hardware? The system abounds with space debris, defunct satellites from a century of technological progress. …read more
When a rocket sends a capsule up with supplies for the International Space Station, they usually send a bunch of their trash back down with it, all of which burns up in the atmosphere on re-entry. But as long as you’ve got that (doomed) vehicle up there, you might as well do some science with it along the way. And that’s exactly what the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) is doing with their Kounotori 6 supply ship that just left the ISS on Friday.
The experiment is with an electromagnetic tether that can be used to either turn electrical energy into …read more
Continue reading Japanese ISS Supply Ship Dual-Purposed As Tether Experiment
When a rocket sends a capsule up with supplies for the International Space Station, they usually send a bunch of their trash back down with it, all of which burns up in the atmosphere on re-entry. But as long as you’ve got that (doomed) vehicle up there, you might as well do some science with it along the way. And that’s exactly what the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) is doing with their Kounotori 6 supply ship that just left the ISS on Friday.
The experiment is with an electromagnetic tether that can be used to either turn electrical energy into …read more
Continue reading Japanese ISS Supply Ship Dual-Purposed As Tether Experiment
Asteroids, space weather, flying junk: David Kendall has his work cut out for him. Continue reading How the UN’s Top Outer Space Boss Will Fight Space Debris
