spaceflight
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Pioneering Climate Satellite to Bid Farewell With Fiery Uncontrolled Return to Earth
After 13 years of slow orbital decay, a legacy satellite will finally be put out of its misery by plunging through Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up into tiny fragments. The second European Remote Sensing satellite, ERS-2, is scheduled for an atmospheric reentry in mid-February, ending a 16-year mission that revolutionized our understanding of…
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January Was One Hell of Month in Spaceflight
We knew 2024 was going to be a landmark year in spaceflight, and judging by the wide range of developments in just the first month, we’re in for an extraordinary ride throughout the rest of the year. It’s been a wild month in space. NASA finally cracked open its asteroid sample container, revealing cosmic secrets…
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Satellites Are Getting a Constellation of Traffic Cops
Earth’s orbit will be monitored by a watchful set of robotic eyes, the first commercial constellation of satellites with the ability to keep track of objects in space to avoid collisions between spacecraft. Canadian startup NorthStar is getting ready to launch the first four of its Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites equipped with advanced optical…
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China’s Gravity-1 Rocket Dazzles in Landmark Sea Launch
Shandong-based Orienspace pulled off its first-ever launch, breaking the record for the largest payload capacity on a commercial rocket for China’s growing space industry. The Chinese company launched the Gravity-1 rocket on Thursday at 12:30 a.m. ET from a mobile platform in the Yellow Sea, producing massive plumes above the surface of the water that…