Category Archives: News and Updates

News about Astronomy and Space Science. Find every news item and update here, in blog format. You can get these updates sent straight to your mailbox by subscribing here, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking the link.

Increased Solar activity helps clear away Space Junk

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Some good news after the ISS was recently forced to dodge a piece of orbital debris:  As the sun moves into its active phase, the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere heat up and expand, causing a tiny amount of drag on orbiting satellites, to the eternal frustration of their operators. But space junk, which tends to be small, slows down and begins spiraling downwards till it eventually re-enters the atmosphere and burns up.  A report from NASA’s Orbital Debris … Continue reading →

ISS dodges crash debris

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 Back in 2009, a defunct Russian satellite (Cosmos 2251) collided with another satellite (Iridium 33) belonging to a satellite phone network, spraying a field of debris across their two orbits and bringing the problem of space junk to public attention.  Then on 13 January 2012, the International Space Station (ISS) was forced to fire the engines on its Svezda Service Module to manoeuvre the 450 tonne structure out of harm’s way, when ground tracking stations sounded the alarm that it … Continue reading →

Rings around exoplanets

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Astronomers studying an exoplanet over 400 light years away have found that it has a system of rings similar to those around Saturn.  The planet was discovered when two separate survey projects noticed the light from a star in the Scorpius-Centaurus association (the nearest region of recent massive star formation to the Sun) dimming slightly at regular intervals.  After eliminating other possible explanations, they concluded that the star must have a planet, and that it’s orbit was aligned with the … Continue reading →

GRAIL’s orbit the Moon

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Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon’s gravity field, as depicted in this artist’s rendering. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The two spacecraft of the Gravity Recovery And Internal Laboratory (GRAIL) mission recently settled into orbit around the Moon after their launch in September last year.  They will spend the next few months gently maneuvering into formation on a circular orbit passing over the Moon’s poles, at an altitude of only 55km above the lunar surface, … Continue reading →

Carnivals of Space #229 and #230

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I’ve been away from my keyboard for long enough to miss two Carnivals of Space.  You can catch up with them both right here.  The 229th carnival is hosted by Next Big Future, and the 230th is hosted by Cheap Astronomy.  Both continue the grand old tradition of the Carnival of Space by collecting a week’s worth of astronomy and space science news into one easily digestible package for your entertainment.

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