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We’ve yet to see a falling piece of space debris strike an airplane, but if it happens, the consequences would almost certainly be catastrophic – and according to a new study, the danger posed to planes is only rising.

The researchers behind the study, from the University of British Columbia in Canada, looked at worldwide flight data to model the distribution of planes in the sky, then compared this to records of uncontrolled rocket body reentries.

The increasing risk is also being driven in part by the mass deployment of satellites, like SpaceX’s Starlink, which will eventually reenter our airspace.

face_with_colon_three Big change to cellular satellites directly to cell phones now where wherever there is sky you link up with no receiver other than a smartphone.


T-Mobile’s push to allow AT&T and Verizon customers to tap into its cellular Starlink service underscores a growing competition in the satellite-to-phone market.

Croatia’s first ever satellite has just beamed to Earth the first image of its homeland.

The satellite, called CroCube, is a 1U cubesat 3.3 by 3.3 by 3.3 inches (10 × 10 × 10 centimeters) in size. It launched to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in late December on the company’s Bandwagon-2 rideshare mission.

The largest solar storm in two decades hit Earth in May 2024. For several days, wave after wave of high-energy charged particles from the sun rocked the planet. Brilliant auroras engulfed the skies, and some GPS communications were temporarily disrupted.

With the help of a serendipitously resurrected small NASA satellite, scientists have discovered that this also created two new temporary belts of energetic particles encircling Earth. The findings are important to understanding how future solar storms could impact our technology.

The new belts formed between two others that permanently surround Earth called the Van Allen Belts. Shaped like high above Earth’s equator, these permanent belts are composed of a mix of high-energy electrons and protons that are trapped in place by Earth’s magnetic field. The energetic particles in these belts can damage spacecraft and imperil astronauts who pass through them, so understanding their dynamics is key to safe spaceflight.

“These are among the smallest signals detected by the Swarm mission so far,” Alexander Grayver, a geophysics researcher at the University of Cologne in Germany, said in the statement. “The data are particularly good because they were gathered during a period of solar minimum, when there was less noise due to space weather.”

The Swarm mission has already passed its expected end of life, but researchers hope the satellites will remain operational until the next solar minimum, which will come at around 2030.

The study was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A in December 2024.

“For the First Time Ever: China’s Tiangong Astronauts Create Oxygen & Rocket Fuel in Orbit!”
For the first time, astronauts aboard China’s Tiangong space station have achieved a groundbreaking feat: converting carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and rocket fuel using artificial photosynthesis. This revolutionary technology mimics how plants create energy and has the potential to transform space exploration forever. Imagine astronauts producing breathable air and spacecraft fuel directly in orbit—no more costly resupply missions from Earth! This efficient, sustainable innovation could enable long-term missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, making the dream of a multi-planetary future more achievable than ever. In this video, we’ll explore how this technology works, why it’s so important, and what it means for humanity’s next big leap. Don’t miss out on this exciting update about the future of space exploration!
References:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3295452/chin…ation-leap.
https://interestingengineering.com/space/china-makes-resourc…ace-travel.
https://www.gasworld.com/story/china-turns-co2-into-oxygen-o…7.article/
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Watch Also:
What is a Super-Earth (TOI-715 b): NASA’s new discovery That Could Support Life.

Did The NASA Hubble Telescope Really Capture Heaven?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulPmKGaHXTg.

Step by Step! How SpaceX Assembled and installed Mechazilla in just a Few Weeks?

Russia’s Nuclear Space Weapon: How It Could destroy satellites with massive energy wave.

NISAR, an upcoming Earth satellite mission by NASA

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is the United States government agency responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. Established in 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act, NASA has led the U.S. in space exploration efforts, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle program.

A study led by researchers from the University of Virginia has used satellite measurements to show the long-term persistence of air pollution inequalities tied to industrialized swine facilities in Eastern North Carolina.

Using spanning a 15-year period from 2008–2023, the study quantifies disparities in ammonia (NH3)—an air pollutant emitted by swine operations—for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous communities. These inequalities, exacerbated by hot and calm weather conditions, extend for multiple kilometers beyond the immediate vicinity of the facilities, highlighting the widespread impact of this environmental issue.

The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology by Sally Pusede and her team in the Department of Environmental Sciences at UVA, uses data from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) aboard multiple polar-orbiting satellites. By analyzing NH3 levels in the atmosphere, UVA researchers were able to show that emissions from industrial swine operations result in systematic environmental inequalities.

A team of international researchers has developed an innovative approach to uncover the secrets of dark matter. In a collaboration between the University of Queensland, Australia, and Germany’s metrology institute (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, PTB), the team used data from atomic clocks and cavity-stabilized lasers located far apart in space and time to search for forms of dark matter that would have been invisible in previous searches.

This technique will allow the researchers to detect signals from dark matter models that interact universally with all atoms, an achievement that has eluded traditional experiments.

The team analyzed data from a European network of ultra-stable lasers connected by fiber (previously reported in a 2022 article), and from the aboard GPS satellites. By comparing across vast distances, the analysis became sensitive to subtle effects of oscillating dark matter fields that would otherwise cancel out in conventional setups.

Smaller than a strawberry seed, this tiny signal amplifier was produced by the European Space Agency to fill a missing link in current technology, helping to make future radar-observing and telecommunications space missions feasible.

“This integrated circuit is a low noise amplifier, measuring just 1.8 by 0.9 mm across,” explains ESA microwave engineer David Cuadrado-Calle. “Delivering state of the art performance, the low noise amplifier’s task is to boost very faint signals to usable levels.”

It could in the future be employed for both radar-based missions—where the faint signals are the radar echoes received by the instrument after they bounce off Earth’s surface and travel back to the satellite—and telecommunications —where the communication signals coming from Earth are amplified by the satellite and sent back to Earth for broadband access or broadcasting services.