Author Archives: Allen Versfeld

About Allen Versfeld

Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five growing kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He has formerly served as Director of the Astrophotography and Citizen Science sections of the Astronomical Society of South Africa. You can find his personal social media feed on Mastodon!

Hayabusa returns to Earth

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On 13 June, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA’s) Hayabusa mission will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and parachute down to land in the Woomera Prohibited Area, Australia.  Only once it has been recovered will mission scientists be able to tell if it has successfully returned a sample of asteroid Itokawa. Launched in 2003, Hayabusa was already something of a marvel.  Powered by ground-breaking Ion engines, the probe was to rendezvous with Itokawa in 2005, then land, scoop up samples and … Continue reading →

Coronal Rain

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NASA’s brand new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has recorded the most stunning images of superhot plasma raining down on the solar surface.  Footage recorded last week over four hours revealed one of the largest solar eruptions ever seen, in which billions of tonnes of plasma are blasted out into space.  Some of the debris then falls back down to the surface, having cooled down to a relatively frosty 60,000 degrees Celsius. While the phenomenon of coronal rain has been known … Continue reading →

US Airforce Launches Secret Spaceplane

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The US Airforce launched the secretive X-37B spaceplane late yesterday on its first full test mission.  Although details of the mission are classified, the launch was made public and could be viewed via live webstream.  Originally commissioned by NASA as a rescue craft for the International Space Station (ISS), the project was later abandoned and taken over by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the speculative research (read:  Mad Scientist) department of the US military.  DARPA’s earlier projects include gigantic airborne lasers … Continue reading →

Seven more years for Cassini

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Two years of hard work by NASA orbital engineers have allowed the team behind the Cassini mission to add another seven years to the probe’s already astonishing career.  Six years into the mission and with only 22% of it’s fuel remaining, a new mission has been drawn up allowing it to continue exploring Saturn and it’s systems of rings and planets.  To achieve such longevity with so little fuel requires some very careful navigation, eking the maximum advantage from gravitational … Continue reading →

Huge fireball streaks over USA

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At around 10:00 PM, something entered the atmosphere over the american midwest, and burned up in a spectacular fireball.  It has stirred up a great deal of comment amongst the public, but if astronomers seem uninterested it is because such events are actually quite commonplace.  We had a very similar fireball here in South Africa only a few months ago, and there have been several around the world since then.  In fact, it is believed that a meteoroid of half … Continue reading →