What happens when the world’s largest space agency gets hit by simultaneous arbitrary budget cuts and accusations of security lapses? It starts pulling up the drawbridges, that’s what. On March 13, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued a new policy on NASA personnel travelling to conferences: they can’t. In response to sequestration cuts that went into effect March 1, NASA decided that [...]
Post Tagged with: “United States”
Aurorae Continue Following Coronal Mass Ejection
On March 15, a strong Coronal Mass Ejection spat solar material straight at Earth. The geomagnetic storm arrived on March 17. Rated as a G1 level storm, it did not have any disruptive electrical impacts, but did expand the auroral circle from the North Pole as far south as the northern United States and mainland Europe. Spaceweather.com reports that solar [...]
Europe Steps Up to Develop Space-Surveillance Network
On February 28, the European Commission (EC), the executive body of the European Union (EU), launched a new program to address the space debris problem. “Some EU Member States have national systems, radars or telescopes that could be used for monitoring satellites and space debris,” reported the EC in a statement. However, “European satellite operators almost completely depend on United States space surveillance [...]
Russian Meteor Explosion vs. Hiroshima Bomb: The Real Comparison
On February 15 at 3:20:26 UTC, a supersonic flying space rock, roughly the size of a van or a small truck, entered Earth’s atmosphere, exploded at 24,140 meters over Russia’s Chelyabinsk, and produced a total destructive blast power of 500 kilotons. This means the destructive power yield was 30 times the blast yield of the U.S. atomic bomb, named Little [...]
Curiosity and Orion Parade for Presidential Inauguration
On January 21, Barack Obama was cermonially inaugurated into his second four year term as president of the United States. In celebration, states and organizations from around the country sent their delegations to walk in the inaugural parade. Although this inauguration did not produce an iconic satellite image like Obama’s first, it did feature life size models of Curiosity and Orion [...]
Mercury Program Director Dies Aged 91
Dyer Brainerd Holmes, NASA’s director of human space flight program in the early ‘60s, died on January 11 at the age of 91. Holmes, who is survived by his wife and two daughters, passed away due to complications from pneumonia. “When a great nation is faced with a technological challenge, it has to accept or go backward,” said Mr. Holmes [...]
Is China Preparing an Anti-Satellite Test?
U.S. experts think China is preparing to perform another anti-satellite (ASAT) test in January. “The first media report on these rumours appeared in October,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists on a blog post dated January 4th. “China’s Ministry of Defence challenged the information in that report, but in November contacts in China told us an announcement about an [...]
South Korea Analyzes Unha-3 Debris, Declares US in Range
On December 12, North Korea surprised the world by launching a rocket and hoisting a satellite into space. The satellite was quickly determined to be non-functional and to have no attitude control, but that did not reassure the country’s many foes, including South Korea and the United States, who fear that development of launch capabilities masks the intention to create nuclear [...]
Sutter’s Mill Meteor Fastest, Most Diverse Ever
On April 22, 2012, the western United States witnessed a fireball streaking across the sky, followed by a sonic boom. Within hours, professional and amateur collectors were out hunting for the valuable carbonaceous chondrite meteorite fragments that littered the ground across the Sierra Nevada mountains. Now, the first paper has been published on the meteorites and the meteor has been declared [...]
International Space Station Dodges Space Debris From 2009 Collision
The International Space Station orbit was raised one kilometer by Russia’s Mission Control Centre to avoid a possible collision with a fragment of the U.S. communications satellite Iridium-33, which collided with the derelict Cosmos 2251 on February 10, 2009 over Siberia. The raising is the 15th unscheduled maneuver to avoid space debris. The collision between Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 [...]
