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.

First probe to reach interstellar space

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Artist’s impression of Voyager 1 Credit: NASA Two of the most famous robotic spacecraft ever launched, the Voyager probes, continue to beam back scientific data more than thirty three years after they were launched – not bad considering that they were only designed with a five year life-span.  Launched several weeks apart atop powerful Titan-Centaur rockets, they took advantage of a unique positioning of the planets to use a series of gravity assist flybys to boost them up to extremely high speeds.  … Continue reading →

That’s no asteroid!

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On the evening of 21 February 1906, A. Kopff discovered asteroid 596 Scheila. (596) Scheila, the asteroid with a tail. Image credit: Peter Lake   It was found to have a fairly typical Main Body orbit, meaning that it lives comfortably in the middle of the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.  Beyond that, it never attracted much notice, being just one amongst billions of asteroids.  This all changed over the weekend, when Steve Larson of the University of Arizona’s … Continue reading →

South African Space Agency

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In December 2008, President Kgalema Motlanthe signed into law the South African National Space Agency Act, providing for a South African space program.  Yesterday, 9 December 2010, minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandoor unveiled the new South African National Space Agency (SANSA).  South Africa already posesses a great deal of space technology, including launch facilities, which were built as part of the previous regime’s nuclear weapons program.  Part of SANSA’s mandate is to take these facilities out of mothballs … Continue reading →

First ever commercial spaceship lands on Earth

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Thanksto South African born PayPal millionaire Elon Musk, the space age can now truly begin.  His space flight company SpaceX has just put a space ship into space for two complete orbits around the Earth, and succesfully splashed it down in the Pacific ocean.  The entire flight (including launch) lasted three hours and twenty minutes, and the capsule splashed down within 800m of its landing target.  This is the first complete space mission ever by a private entity and marks … Continue reading →

Akatsuki fails to achieve orbit

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Sad news for the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) yesterday, as they announced that the Akatsuki mission to Venus had failed to achieve orbit around Venus.  The probe, which was launched on 21 May 2010, will be left to wander in its current orbit around the Sun for six years until it drifts into a suitable position for a second attempt. Akatsuki is an orbiter, intended to study the Venusian atmosphere.  It’s eventual destination is a highly elliptical orbit around Venus, in … Continue reading →