Earth’s atmosphere is shrinking due to climate change and one of the possible negative impacts is that space junk will stay in orbit for longer, bonk into other bits of space junk, and make so much mess that low Earth orbits become less useful. That miserable set of predictions appeared on Monday in a Nature Read more about Bad news for Starlink: Earth’s atmosphere is shrinking[…]

NASA and the Italian Space Agency made history on March 3, when the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) became the first technology demonstration to acquire and track Earth-based navigation signals on the Moon’s surface. The LuGRE payload’s success in lunar orbit and on the surface indicates that signals from the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) Read more about NASA, ASI Blue Ghost Successfully Acquires GPS Signals on Moon lander Blue Ghost[…]

Blue Ghost, a NASA-funded lunar lander built and operated by the private U.S. company Firefly Aerospace, has successfully touched down on the moon. After 45 days in space—and a pulse-pounding semi-autonomous hour-long descent to its landing site—at 3:35 A.M. EST three of the boxy, car-sized spacecraft’s four footpad-tipped legs crunched into the surface of Mare Read more about Blue Ghost, a Private U.S. Spacecraft, Successfully Lands on the Moon[…]

LignoSat was sent to the ISS in November 2024 on a mission to demonstrate that wood could be a viable material from which to build spacecraft. The goal of the satellite includes studying how the selected wood reacts when exposed to the environment of space and its resistance to cosmic radiation. Researchers will also monitor Read more about Japan’s wooden satellite leaves International Space Station • The Register[…]

The ionosphere is a layer of weakly ionized plasma bathed in Earth’s geomagnetic field extending about 50–1,500 kilometres above Earth1. The ionospheric total electron content varies in response to Earth’s space environment, interfering with Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS) signals, resulting in one of the largest sources of error for position, navigation and timing services2. Networks Read more about Mapping the ionosphere with millions of phones[…]

Orbital mechanics is a fun subject, as it involves a lot of seemingly empty space that’s nevertheless full of very real forces, all of which must be taken into account lest one’s spacecraft ends up performing a sudden lithobraking maneuver into a planet or other significant collection of matter in said mostly empty space. The Read more about Lagrange Points visualised, explained and what satellites are parked there[…]

[…] The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has released the highest-resolution geological maps of the Moon yet. The Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe, which took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile, reveals a total of 12,341 craters, 81 basins and 17 rock types, along with other basic geological information about the Read more about China releases most detailed Moon atlas ever made[…]

A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. Varda Space Industries’ in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat Read more about Varda Space, Rocket Lab nail first-of-its-kind spacecraft landing in Utah, bring back space grown drugs[…]

[…] how can we determine the mass of something larger, such as the Milky Way? One method is to estimate the number of stars in the galaxy and their masses, then estimate the mass of all the interstellar gas and dust, and then rough out the amount of dark matter… It all gets very complicated. Read more about Astronomers Measure the Mass of the Milky Way by Calculating How Hard it is to Escape[…]

Our planet sits in the Habitable Zone of our Sun, the special place where water can be liquid on the surface of a world. But that’s not the only thing special about us: we also sit in the Galactic Habitable Zone, the region within the Milky Way where the rate of star formation is just Read more about The Galactic Habitable Zone[…]

Astronomers have discovered stars that appear to be blowing out plumes of smoke. The “old smokers”, as they have been nicknamed, challenge our ideas of what happens at the end of giant stars’ lives. Generally, when red giant stars grow old, they begin to pulsate. They become brighter, dimmer, brighter again and so on, while Read more about Newly discovered smoking stars emit huge clouds.[…]