Space Debris

Amazon's plan to launch a series of satellites to offer broadband internet service can move ahead now that the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has endorsed the web giant's plan to keep space tidy. Barring unforeseen obstacles, Amazon expects to launch its first Project Kuiper satellites "in early 2023." Project…

A see-off ceremony for three taikonauts of the Shenzhou-15 manned space mission is held at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, Nov. 29, 2022.(Xinhua/Liu Lei)   BEIJING, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Shenzhou-15 taikonauts, who are currently on board the Chinese Tiangong space station, will conduct their first…

Home News Spaceflight Some chunks of space junk recovered in Australia were later identified as leftovers from SpaceX's Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station, which launched in November 2020 and returned to Earth in May 2021. (Image credit: Brad Tucker, Author provided) People are finding more and more pieces…

ADEO being deployed from the ION Satellite Carrier during the December 2022 test.Gif: High Performance Space Structure Systems/Gizmodo There’s a lot of junk orbiting our planet, from tiny flecks of paint to defunct rocket stages. While solutions to remove pre-existing debris have been developed, a private space company in Germany…

Home News Spaceflight An illustration of Earth orbit overcrowded with space junk and orbital debris. (Image credit: EvgeniyShkolenko/Getty Images) Low Earth orbit was the site of a near-miss today (Jan. 27) that had the potential to create thousands of pieces of hazardous space debris.  Satellite monitoring and collision detection firm…

Photo: PLA Southern Theater Command On Sunday, the day of the Chinese New Year, two fighter planes of a naval aviation brigade under the PLA Southern Theater Command took off from Yongxing Island in the Xisha Islands to track and monitor foreign aircraft over the South China Sea, the PLA…

Swinburne University’s Chief Scientist Virginia Kilborn says the “volume” of satellites planned to launch in the near future could “cause problems” regarding space junk. “The volume of satellites that is planned to be launched could cause problems for things like space junk or even just trying to then work out…

Home News Spaceflight NASA's Earth Radiation Budget Satellite on the end of the space shuttle Challenger's robotic am in 1984 during deployment. It will fall to Earth on Sunday, Jan. 8, NASA says. (Image credit: NASA) A defunct NASA satellite is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere on Sunday evening (Jan.…

The current Transastra Sutter ground telescope test model, comprising four telescopes, moved in early April to the Winer Observatory, where over two months it tracked multiple small, dark, fast-moving objects by collecting about 50 extended images every night built from over 6,000 exposures taken over an eight-hour period. They will…

NASA astronaut Josh Cassada near the spool of the roll-out solar array during deployment Thursday. Credit: NASA TV / Spaceflight Now Another roll-out solar array was installed and deployed by astronauts Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada outside the International Space Station on on a spacewalk Thursday, a day later than…