Tag: Space Junk
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No fooling: Skywatchers zero in on fiery fall of China’s Tiangong-1 space lab
An artist’s conception shows China’s Tiangong-1 space lab flying over the Gulf of Mexico. (The Aerospace Corp. via YouTube) After months of tracking China’s uncontrollable Tiangong-1 space lab, satellite watchers have narrowed down the time frame for its final, fiery plunge through the atmosphere — and it’s this weekend. Here are a few of the current…
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We’re bad at cleaning up the trash in space, so a gecko gripper robot is here to help
Scientists tested their robotic gripper on NASA’s reduced gravity aircraft, known as the Weightless Wonder. (Jiang et al. / Stanford University via Science / AAAS) Sandra Bullock’s character nearly got killed by space debris in the movie “Gravity” — but had she been equipped with the gecko-like robot built by researchers from Stanford University and…
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Chinese space junk sparks meteor reports
YouTube user Ian Norman captured this view of the fireball in the skies over Alabama Hills, Calif. (Credit: Ian Norman via YouTube) A bright streak in the sky generated hundreds of meteor sighting reports from Southern California to British Columbia, but it didn’t take long for the flash to be traced to the re-entry of…
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High-flying scientists capture mystery object WT1190F’s fiery breakup on video
An image captured from a chartered Gulfstream 450 business jet shows the fiery breakup of the space object known as WT1190F. (Credit: IAC via YouTube) Scientists flying on an instrument-laden jet captured great video views of a mysterious space object known as WT1190F as it streaked through the air and burned up over the Indian…
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Mystery object WT1190F comes down over Indian Ocean but fails to make a splash
An image taken from a NASA DC-8 airplane shows the re-entry of Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft in 2010. WT1190F’s re-entry was far less spectacular because it occurred at midday local time amid cloudy weather. (Credit: Jesse Carpenter / Greg Merkes / NASA Ames file) Was it a spent Apollo rocket stage from the ’60s? A scary space…
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Did two more Iridium satellites collide with space debris?
An Iridium satellite on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Credit: Image by Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution Two mystifying incidents last year involving separate Iridium communications satellites have experts wondering whether the spacecraft collided with tiny fragments of space junk. Both satellites kept…