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05 July 2010
New Satellite for Monitoring Space Debris To Launch
The U.S. Air Force will launch the first-ever satellite dedicated solely to tracking the positions of other satellites and the thousands of pieces of space debris in Earth orbit. The $500 million Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite, scheduled for a July 8 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, will continuously monitor the "traffic" around [...]
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25 June 2010
Climate Change Contributes to Space Junk Problem
The effects of climate change can be seen across the majority of the planet, but a new study reveals it is also affecting the space environment. New Scientist reports that increased carbon dioxide levels are cooling the upper atmosphere, which decreases the atmospheric density. This in turn affects how long defunct satellites, spent rocket boosters [...]
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22 June 2010
Israel Launches Spy Satellite
Israel launched an "Ofeq 9" satellite on Tuesday, an advanced remote sensing satellite that likely is capable of high resolution surveillance to monitor Iran's nuclear program. The satellite was launched on Israel's Shavit launch vehicle. The Israel Defense Ministry gave no public details on the satellite, only releasing this statement following the launch: "A few [...]
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28 May 2010
Air Force Launches Next Generation GPS Satellite
The first in a series of next-generation GPS satellites launched late Thursday from Cape Canaveral launch Complex 37 on board a Delta IV rocket. The Air Force’s Global Positioning System GPS IIF SV-1 satellite blasted off at 11 p.m. EDT on May 27, 2010, after overcoming three different launch aborts over the last [...]
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20 May 2010
Oil Slick on the Move Towards Florida, Possibly East Coast of US
Confirming some of the worst fears about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, satellite images now show part of the oil slick has entered the Loop Current, a powerful conveyor belt-like current that flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida. The Loop Current joins the Gulf Stream — [...]
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18 May 2010
Japan to Launch Venus Orbiter and Solar Sail Missions
Bad weather postponed a scheduled multi-mission launch of an H-IIA rocket from Japan early Tuesday, which includes the first Japanese probe to Venus and an experimental solar sail. The next launch attempt for the "Akatsuki" Venus Climate Orbiter and an the solar sail called IKAROS will be Thursday, May 20, at 21:58 UTC [...]
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05 May 2010
Shutdown of 'Zombie' Satellite Unsuccessful
A geostationary satellite that had its "brains fried" by a solar flare (love that description by our pal Ian O'Neill at Discovery Space) stopped communicating with ground controllers last month and remains out of control. While the Galaxy 15 communication satellite is still functional, its navigation and communications system are not. The instruments [...]
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17 March 2010
Planck Reveals Giant Dust Structures in our Local Neighborhood
Dust has never looked so beautiful! This new image from the Planck spacecraft shows giant filaments of cold dust stretching through our galaxy. The image spans about 50 degrees of the sky, showing our local neighborhood within approximately 500 light-years of the Sun. “What makes these structures have these particular shapes [...]
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05 March 2010
GOES-P Goes to Space
A Delta IV rocket rumbled and roared off launch pad 37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Thursday evening, sending the GOES-P satellite soaring into a crisp and clear night sky. With liftoff at 6:57 p.m. EST, the rocket could be seen for several minutes after launch, and booster separation was clearly [...]
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01 March 2010
Satellite Images of Chile Earthquake
Haze lingered over the metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile, following a magnitude 8.8 earthquake on February 27, 2010. In an image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite at 14:25 UTC, black smoke hung over the northern part of the city, while light-colored haze (perhaps pollution and/or dust) covered the southern [...]
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23 February 2010
With a Name Like GOES-P, This Satellite Has to be Good
The final spacecraft in the "GOES" series of NASA and NOAA geostationary environmental weather satellites is ready for launch. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, and in evidence that not all acronyms turn out for the best, this latest satellite in the series is GOES-P. But (to quote the Bad Astronomer) this [...]
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20 February 2010
ESA's Tough Choice: Dark Matter, Sun Close Flyby, Exoplanets (Pick Two)
Key questions relevant to fundamental physics and cosmology, namely the nature of the mysterious dark energy and dark matter (Euclid); the frequency of exoplanets around other stars, including Earth-analogs (PLATO); take the closest look at our Sun yet possible, approaching to just 62 solar radii (Solar Orbiter) … but only two! What would be your [...]
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11 February 2010
WISE Spies Its First Comet
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE is living up to expectations, as it now has discovered its first comet, shortly after finding its first asteroid. The spacecraft, just launched on Dec. 14, 2009 and first spotted the comet on January 22, 2010. WISE is expected to find millions of other objects during [...]
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11 February 2010
The Solar Dynamics Observatory Soars to Study the Sun
The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched successfully – and beautifully – Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 41 to begin a 5-year mission that will provide streaming, high-definition views of our sun. It was the 100th launch of the Atlas/Centaur combo, and was a gorgeous sight as it roared and soared into the blue [...]
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07 February 2010
Satellite View of "Snowmageddon"
Did you live through what has been called “snowmageddon” or “snowpocalypse?” Here's a satellite's-eye view of the exceptionally severe winter in the Eastern US that dropped several feet of snow on Feb. 6 and 7. Reports of crashed and abandoned cars and hundreds of cancelled flights were interspersed with stories of massive [...]
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