Between the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and today, humanity has collectively dropped tens of thousands of pieces of litter in low-Earth orbit. Some of it is large enough to keep an eye on, but most of it is too small to see. Worse, as space junk whips around the planet at more than 17,000 miles per hour, it inevitably smashes into other bits of junk, shattering into smaller but more numerous bits. When space exploration began, there wasn’t a lot of thought given to the ultimate fate of abandoned s
Last Hurrah At the end of July, a satellite from the European Space Agency re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, burning up spectacularly. Now, the space agency has released new images of its fiery, final moments — confirming the success of a never before attempted reentry maneuver. The satellite, Aeolus, had been in orbit for nearly five […]
The European Space Agency was able to shorten the amount of time the satellite took to fall to Earth, and limit the risk of it hitting populated areas.
Unlike traditional methods that provided limited and localized data, Aeolus could track global wind movement at all altitudes, from the surface up to the stratosphere.