Space and astronomy news
Our satellites are dispassionate observers of Earth’s climate change. From their vantage point they watch as pack ice slowly loses its hold on polar oceans, ice shelfs break apart, and previously frozen parts of the planet turn green with vegetation.
Now, scientists have compiled 35 years of satellite data showing that Antarctica is slowly, yet perceptibly, becoming greener.
Continue reading “Antarctica Has Gotten 10 Times Greener in 35 Years”
Filmmakers love New Zealand. Its landscapes evoke other worlds, which explains why so much of The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. The country has everything from long, subtropical sandy beaches to active volcanoes.
The country’s otherworldliness extends into its atmosphere, where a cloud nicknamed the “Taieri Pet” forms when conditions are right.
Continue reading “An Otherworldly Cloud Over New Zealand”
In a few years, as part of the Artemis Program, NASA will send the “first woman and first person of color” to the lunar surface. This will be the first time astronauts have set foot on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. This will be followed by the creation of permanent infrastructure that will allow for regular missions to the surface (once a year) and a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development.” This will require spacecraft making regular trips between the Earth and Moon to deliver crews, vehicles, and payloads.
In a recent NASA-supported study, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigated a new method of sending spacecraft to the Moon. It is known as “multimode propulsion,” a method that integrates a high-thrust chemical mode and a low-thrust electric mode – while using the same propellant. This system has several advantages over other forms of propulsion, not the least of which include being lighter and more cost-effective. With a little luck, NASA could rely on multimode propulsion-equipped spacecraft to achieve many of its Artemis objectives.
Continue reading “Multimode Propulsion Could Revolutionize How We Launch Things to Space”
In 1978, NASA scientists Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais proposed a scenario where the density of objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) would be high enough that collisions between objects would cause a cascade effect. In short, these collisions would create debris that would result in more collisions, more debris, and so on. This came to be known as the Kessler Syndrome, something astronomers, scientists, and space environmentalists have feared for many decades. In recent years, and with the deployment of more satellites than ever, the warning signs have become undeniable.
Currently, there is an estimated 13,000 metric tons (14,330 US tons) of “space junk” in LEO. With the breakup and another satellite in orbit – the Intelsat 33e satellite – the situation will only get worse. This broadband communications satellite was positioned about 35,000 km (21,750 mi) above the Indian Ocean in a geostationary orbit (GSO). According to initial reports issued on October 20th, the Intelsat 33e satellite experienced a sudden power loss. Hours later, the U.S. Space Forces (USSF) confirmed that the satellite appeared to have broken up into at least 20 pieces.
Continue reading “Orbital Debris is Getting Out of Control”
Global internet access does seem like a worthy enterprise yet the rise of satellite megaconstellations there is a danger of the night sky becoming ruined. Astronomers the world over are keeping an eye on the impact these satellites are having on the night sky. Until recently the concerns have been relating to the reflection of visible light against the sky hindering night time observations. A recent study shows that the second-generation Starlink satellites leak 32 times the radio signal than the previous models. Are their presence putting at risk the radio sky now too?
Continue reading “Second Generation Starlinks are 32 Times Brighter in Radio Wavelengths”
Bigger antennas are better, at least according to researchers interested in geospatial monitoring. That’s because higher resolution in monitoring applications requires larger apertures. So imagine the excitement in the remote sensing community when a researcher from Leidos, a government consulting firm, developed an idea that dramatically increased the effective aperture size of a remote radio-frequency monitoring system simply by tying a rotating antenna to a flat “sparse” array. That’s exactly what Dr. John Kendra did, and it has garnered him not only two NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grants to advance the technology but also a prize paper award at a technical conference on remote sensing. In other words, if implemented correctly, the Rotary-Motion Extended Array Synthesis (R-MXAS) technology could be a game changer for remote sensing applications.
Continue reading “A Unique Combination of Antennas Could Revolutionize Remote Sensing”
We are all too aware of the pollution on planet Earth. There are increased amounts of plastic and garbage on the world’s beaches and debris littering the oceans. Until now, it was thought that satellites weren’t capable of tracking marine debris but a supercomputer algorithm challenges that. 300,000 images were taken every three days at a resolution of 10 metres and were able to identify large concentrations of debris.
Continue reading “Satellites are Going to Track Garbage Drifting Across the Oceans”
Satellites in orbit use rocket propulsion to maintain their altitude. These engines require fuel to power their chemical or ion engines but when the fuel runs out, the orbit slowly erodes with the satellite re-entering the atmosphere. A new type of electrical propulsion has been developed that has no need for onboard fuel. Instead it syphons air particles out of the atmosphere and accelerates them to provide thrust. Much like an ion engine but this time, the fuel source is air making it ideal for low Earth orbits.
Continue reading “Next Generation Satellites Might Skim the Atmosphere, Using Air as a Propellant”
Space debris is a growing problem, so companies are working on ways to mitigate it. A new satellite called ADRAS-J was built and launched to demonstrate how a spacecraft could rendezvous with a piece of space junk, paving the path for future removal. Astroscale Japan Inc, the Japanese company behind the satellite, released a new picture from the mission showing a close image of its target space debris, a discarded Japanese H2A rocket’s upper stage, captured from just a few hundred meters away.
Continue reading “This is an Actual Picture of Space Debris”
Most satellites share the same fate at the end of their lives. Their orbits decay, and eventually, they plunge through the atmosphere toward Earth. Most satellites are destroyed during their rapid descent, but not always
Heavy pieces of the satellite, like reaction wheels, can survive and strike the Earth. Engineers are trying to change that.
Continue reading “Watch a Satellite Reaction Wheel Melt in a Simulated Orbital Re-Entry”