For the better part of a week, space debris experts gathered in Darmstadt, Germany to discuss the current and future state of Earth’s orbital space. The conclusions were bleak: even cessation of all launches and 100% compliance with the 25 year deorbit rule would be insufficient to keep low Earth orbit debris from spiraling out of control. Conference participants declared [...]
Articles written by: Staff Writers
Global Experts Agree Action Needed on Space Debris
Source: ESA 25 April 2013 There is an urgent need to remove orbiting space debris and to fly satellites in the future without creating new fragments, Europe’s largest-ever space-debris conference announced today. The findings from the 6th European Conference on Space Debris were released during the concluding press briefing at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Future space missions must [...]
Cygnus Mass Simulator Photographed from Antares
On April 21, Orbital Sciences successfully launched its Antares rocket on its first test flight from Wallops Island. In lieu of the real Cygnus capsule, this Antares carried a Cygnus mass simulator just to go along for the ride. The rocket’s onboard camera caught this image shortly after separation of the simulator. Both Antares and the Cygnus simulator are expected [...]
Further Adventures in Space with ISS Commander Chris Hadfield
ISS Commander Chris Hadfield has become known for his demonstrations of ordinary activities that become somewhat extraordinary when enacted in space. His latest display was a response to a question from two Nova Scotian high school students: what happens when you wring a washcloth in space? Watch this bit of microgravity physics at work: Staff WritersMore Posts
NASA, Export Control, and Collaboration: A Bit of Clarification
By Christopher M. Stone Recently, Space Safety Magazine ran an editorial entitled, Sequestration and Espionage: Public Loses Access to NASA, that opined about the recent investigations underway at two NASA centers regarding Chinese espionage and alleged export control violations, as well as NASA decisions to cut education outreach and conference attendance outside the US. This article, and others like it, [...]
Sun Spews Two Coronal Mass Ejections at Satellites as Sunspot Region Grows
The two coronal mass ejections (CME) emitted April 20 and 21 are not headed towards Earth, but they might affect operations of NASA’s Messenger satellite and STEREO-A, one of a pair of solar observing satellites, as they shoot straight for Mercury. In the meantime, the Earth-facing sunspot region AR1726 which only made an appearance on April 19, has now swollen [...]
Space Safety Magazine, Issue 7, Spring 2013
Inside the Spring 2013 Issue of Space Safety Magazine The Time to Organize Space is Now! How the Lithium-Ion Battery Grounded Boeing’s “Dream” The Day After Fukushima: Interview with Prof. Satoshi Tadokoro HeLa Cells: Immortal Space Travellers Under Pressure: A Brief History of Pressure Suits Part 2 Training for Fear: Interview with Mindy Howard iDocking: Interview with Iacopo Baroncini Safety [...]
NASA Prepares to Repair Spacecraft with 3D Printing
3D printing in all its variants is the cutting edge in manufacturing technology at the moment. NASA’s Ames Research Center has installed a 3D printer in their machine shop to explore the potential of this technology for space applications. CNET reports: Staff WritersMore Posts
How to Target an Asteroid
Credits: NASA Like many of his colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., Shyam Bhaskaran is working a lot with asteroids these days. And also like many of his colleagues, the deep space navigator devotes a great deal of time to crafting, and contemplating, computer-generated 3-D models of these intriguing nomads of the solar system. But while many of [...]
Chinese FAST Telescope to Surpass Arecibo
When it comes to understand what’s going on in deep space, whether asteroids and Kuiper belt objects or pulsars and galaxies, it’s all about size. The bigger the telescope, the more it can detect. Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico has been the world’s largest single aperture telescope with a diameter of 305 m. [...]
