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Home / News / Tags / orbit
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The Ulysses robotic space probe is a joint NASA/ESA mission to the Sun, launched on October 6th, 1990, from the space shuttle Discovery, during flight STS-41. The craft's main purpose is to analyze the surface of the Sun from various latitudes, and to determine the interactions that exist within the yellow dwarf... |
27 June 2009
03:52 GMT |
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Following the successful orbital insertion of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) space probe on a trajectory around the Moon yesterday, NASA announced that the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) also successfully completed the most important part of its early flight stages. The satellites swu... |
24 June 2009
02:49 GMT |
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After years of planning and research / development, Boeing and the United States Air Force (USAF) are finally ready to begin the testing sequence of their X-37B space plane, which is an unmanned military vehicle, designed to reach orbit, stay there, and then de-orbit safely and land. Flown entirely by remote control,... |
4 June 2009
05:34 GMT |
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In these financially troubled times, creating an enterprise that works is a real challenge, but Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, a start-up in the rocket industry, seems to be doing just fine in that regard. Founded in 2002, the company already has plans to launch the newest in a series of rockets this yea... |
4 June 2009
02:42 GMT |
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The US Department of Defense recently started taking a closer look at its aging Global Positioning System (GPS), after warnings from a top federal official showed that it might be ill-equipped, to ensure that the system's coverage would endure over the next 5 to 10 years. According to the Government Accountabili... |
23 May 2009
03:49 GMT |
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Ten years in the making, the Herschel/Planck mission has just been officially deemed a resounding success. Arianespace's live webcast of the lift-off procedure showed a picture-perfect launch, with the Ariane 5 delivery system thundering away from the Guiana Space Center, in French Guyana, South America. Under a... |
14 May 2009
09:53 GMT |
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Rather than waiting until 2014-2016 to benefit from the advancements that modern technologies would bring in the field of orbital telescope-based space exploration, scientists and engineers working on the planned James Webb Space Telescope have decided to outfit Hubble with one intricate piece of future hardware. Tha... |
9 May 2009
04:33 GMT |
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Space agencies around the world are currently desperately seeking solutions to the crisis in orbit, where numerous spent satellites and first stages from rockets, together with micro asteroids and other orbital debris are posing an immense risk to ongoing missions. While the United States and Europe would rather move... |
4 May 2009
08:47 GMT |
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Having already decided the main contractors for the next generation of Russian spacecraft, the RosCosmos space agency is currently focusing its efforts and interest on assessing if the manned replacement capsule for the four-decade-old Soyuz can land using onboard thrusters, rather than wings or parachutes. In the hi... |
30 April 2009
08:57 GMT |
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Since the 1960s, the amount of debris in Earth's orbit has increased linearly, NASA experts have recently said. The danger of collision between sensitive spacecraft sent to orbit, including high-tech satellites, space shuttles, and the International Space Station (ISS), has since prompted drastic modifications i... |
29 April 2009
04:17 GMT |
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The February collision between a Soviet-era satellite and an American telecommunications one has also triggered a large wave of discussions related to space security, alongside an increased alert level related to space flying. Since the accident, which sent thousands of little debris into space, the danger level in o... |
10 April 2009
08:34 GMT |
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A new European communications satellite was successfully launched into orbit on Friday, at 12:24 pm EDT (1624 GMT) from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Space reports. The mission lasted more than nine hours, and the device was positioned on a high-altitude geosynchronous transfer orbit. A 191-... |
4 April 2009
06:02 GMT |
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Thursday evening, the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched another one of its Ariane 5 vehicles, which this time delivered four satellites into the geosynchronous orbit around Earth. At around 2209 GMT (5:09 pm EST), the booster took off from its French Guyana launch base, in South America, and managed t... |
13 February 2009
12:01 GMT |
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Even before he ran for President, Barack Obama expressed his concern about the morality and use of populating the orbit with space weapons, fearing that if the US engaged in such activities, than every other country with launch capabilities would follow suit. His view thoroughly opposed that of then-President Bush, w... |
5 February 2009
11:04 GMT |
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NASA announced yesterday that the Kepler Telescope, a new observatory destined for one of the most important missions in astronomy, namely to find planets similar to the Earth orbiting other stars, is nearing completion in Florida. Scheduled to take off on March 5, the newest addition to the American space agency... |
31 January 2009
06:01 GMT |
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HD 80606b, a gaseous exoplanet discovered in 2001 by a Swiss research team, offered astronomers a very interesting insight into its inner functions. Analysis revealed the fact that temperatures on the giant, which is four times the size of Jupiter, vary by as much as 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 555 Celsius) wit... |
29 January 2009
05:36 GMT |
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Astronauts who spend tours of duty on the International Space Station (ISS) for the average of six months are at a very high risk of losing a high percentage of their bone mass, doctors have recently announced. According to the report, bone loss in those who have stood onboard the ISS can amount to anything between 1... |
27 January 2009
04:17 GMT |
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The NOAA-N Prime satellite, designed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will be launched on February 4th from NASA's Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The new satellite will have a polar-orbiting operational environment, and its design promises to improve NOAA's ability... |
23 January 2009
03:42 GMT |
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The Moon might have, at some point, been facing us with its “dark side,” a new astronomical theory points out. French researchers at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics have analyzed the disposition of dozens of crater on the lunar surface, and have concluded that the oldest ones are simply not positione... |
22 January 2009
03:37 GMT |
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International Space Station (ISS) commander Michael Fincke, joined by crew member Sandra Magnus, the mission's current flight engineer, watched president Barack Obama's Inauguration Ceremony from the relative comfort of the orbital station, which currently hovers at 354 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth�... |
21 January 2009
05:17 GMT |
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Astronaut Greg Chamitoff called the International Space Station (ISS) home for the last 183 days, as he spent an insane amount of time installing Japan's Kibo Laboratory and conducting other tasks, necessary for the crucial operations that go around in Earth's orbit. During this time, he celebrated NASA... |
22 December 2008
08:22 GMT |
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Eutelsat, one of the largest communications company in Europe, got its latest satellites delivered to orbit on Saturday, via an Ariane 5 rocket, which blasted off at 7.35 p.m. (5:35 p.m. EST), from the European space base in the French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America. The satellites will be mostly use... |
22 December 2008
05:45 GMT |
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Another planet has been discovered outside the boundaries of our solar system. A team of astronomers came upon the planet while performing observations with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope of McDonald Observatory in Texas. Actually, they did not observe the planet directly, but rather deduced it was there by using the rad... |
2 December 2008
10:13 GMT |
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The number of space objects that humans have created has grown a lot within the recent decades and will be exponentially increasing in the future. With all the planets and celestial phenomena that should be explored and observed, space missions (such as satellites and stations) are in bloom. Also, as overdue or unnee... |
10 November 2008
04:03 GMT |
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The European Organization for Astronomical Research (ESO)'s Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera placed on the 2.2-m Max-Planck telescope from the La Silla observatory site, at an altitude of 2.4 km in the Chilean desert of Atacama, was able to obtain accurate photographs of one of the most massive binary star systems... |
23 October 2008
08:13 GMT |
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More and more scientists seem to be embracing the idea according to which extrasolar planets (planets from outside our solar system) with an oval orbit would provide enough heat in order to spark or sustain life on their surface. These planets would still have to be inside the “habitable zone” around thei... |
22 October 2008
06:26 GMT |
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The two objects in the Kuiper Belt (the icy ring at the edge of our solar system, 6 billion km away from Earth) share a common name, 2001 QW322. They orbit each other in what appears to be the faintest reciprocal influence of two celestial bodies in our system, and they have been doing so for billions of years, whic... |
21 October 2008
07:47 GMT |
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WASP-12b has broken all previous records related to how hot, fast or close to a star a planet can be.As large as 1.8 times the size of Jupiter, the newly-discovered planet, WASP-12b, spins around its star from 1/40 the distance between the Earth and the Sun, completing a full cycle in little over one day, which makes... |
15 October 2008
09:33 GMT |
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Astronomers still have trouble establishing once and for all the number of planets our system is comprised of. The recent conferences were of no help in this regard, as both a clear definition of the term "planet" and a reasonable delimitation line at the end of the planetary system eluded the scientists, while the c... |
23 September 2008
05:38 GMT |
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On August 1, in certain areas of Canada, Greenland, Russia and China broad daylight will suddenly turn to total darkness for a brief moment as the Moon aligns with the Earth and the Sun, casting its shadow on the surface of the planet. It will be yet another unforgettable and unique spectacle, which unfortunately onl... |
16 July 2008
07:55 GMT |
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Yet another reminder of the dangers to which the Earth is subjected every day has been brought to our attention by the Arecibo Radio Observatory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's LINEAR search program which discovered earlier this year an asteroid expected to make a fly-by around Earth sometime tod... |
14 July 2008
02:38 GMT |
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In 1913, Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed for the first time a model describing the atom as a system inside which the electrons revolve around a central bundle of matter called nucleus, similarly to the way planets in the solar system move around the Sun. Nearly a decade later, Bohr would receive the Nobel Prize ... |
1 July 2008
04:43 GMT |
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While searching for supernova explosions that occurred in the early universe, in hope to probe dark energy, astronomers discovered two new objects in the solar system, one orbiting somewhere between Uranus and Neptune while the other lurking in the outer regions of the system. The search for supernova explosions most... |
4 June 2008
04:08 GMT |
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According to astrophysicists, the Sun is about 5 billion years old and will continue to shine for at least as much time before exploding into a supernova to destroy the whole solar system. Latest calculations reveal that the inner rocky planets, including Earth, will be destroyed long before the Sun even swells into ... |
23 April 2008
05:48 GMT |
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Today, anybody or anything which must be transported into Earth's orbit is carried with the help of space rockets. Nonetheless, alternative space transportation devices such as space elevators, for example, could one day make space travel a whole lot faster, safer and cheaper than the conventional methods curren... |
29 March 2008
06:06 GMT |
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The Moon has became over the years the final resting place for a series of man-made objects such as robotic landers, disabled satellites and many other spacecrafts and debris. Albeit it can also became your final resting place for the price of only 10,000 US dollars. The provider of the unique services is a company p... |
28 March 2008
05:56 GMT |
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There is an enormous number of objects remnant from previous missions currently orbiting Earth, most of which have the potential of seriously damaging spacecrafts intersecting their trajectories. Only last year, the destruction of China's Fengyun-1C satellite left behind about 150,000 individual objects less tha... |
19 March 2008
11:05 GMT |
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Fifty years ago, on this very day, the Unites States Navy launched the fourth artificial satellite into space, Vanguard 1, the first satellite into Earth's orbit to be powered by sunlight. Its mission was to test the capabilities of a three-staged vehicle and the effects of the space environment on artificial sa... |
17 March 2008
03:41 GMT |
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After being lifted up into space with the help of the Ariane 5 space rocket, the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle detached itself from the launch vehicle and started its race towards the International Space Station. However, what was called by the European Space Agency a flawless launch proved to be anything bu... |
12 March 2008
11:13 GMT |
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A pretty small prize, one would say, especially considering the implications of a large asteroid hitting the Earth in the near future. We may at least stay calm until the day of 13. April 2036, that is. This is the date when the largest asteroid orbiting through the close vicinity of the Earth may execute a fly-by ar... |
27 February 2008
07:01 GMT |
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So, is it possible to orbit around black holes without falling towards the singularity? Well, against general belief such maneuvers are actually possible. Objects coming in the vicinity of a black hole may enter elliptical orbits, resembling those of the planets in the solar system orbiting the Sun. However, the extr... |
14 February 2008
04:53 GMT |
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We have taught ourselves to believe that all the planets have roughly circular orbits around stars and have changed much over the years, but the truth is far from this presumption. Planets, like all bodies in the universe have highly elliptical orbits, where the 'central' orbited body is situated in one of ... |
11 February 2008
06:35 GMT |
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What stops them you say? Well, it may be the fact that the Bigelow Aerospace agency currently has no vehicle to launch the Bigelow Sundancer module into space. Thus, they started studying the possibility of using Atlas 5 rockets for the initial launch of cargo and and even humans in the close future. If negotiations ... |
5 February 2008
05:32 GMT |
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On Tuesday, the U.S. military warned that a large spy satellite owned by the U.S. has lost power, is decaying its orbit and will most likely hit the Earth in the next two months or so. USA 193's size suggests that, as it will re-enter the atmosphere, it will not burn completely and some parts may end up of the s... |
30 January 2008
02:57 GMT |
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The U.S. officials were very evasive in their press statement released on Saturday, which could be related to the fact that the giant orbiter is a spy satellite. It is unclear when the satellite lost power or when and where it will hit the Earth. What is known is that it cannot be controlled anymore, is quickly decay... |
28 January 2008
02:47 GMT |
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For those of you who are looking for unique images on the night sky, since tonight you can see how the closest planet to Earth, Venus, and the largest planet in the solar system, the gas giant Jupiter, slowly draw together to create some of the brightest systems visible this year. Don't worry though, the two are... |
25 January 2008
05:33 GMT |
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The word satellite originally meant 'co-traveler' or 'traveling companion', and was first attributed to natural bodies orbiting planets such as the Moon, for example, which is Earth's satellite. Currently, the word satellite is mostly used to describe man-made instruments orbiting the Earth, ... |
3 January 2008
11:04 GMT |
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The Ursids meteors shower usually begins on the 17th of December every year, and lasts for more than a week, until 25th or 26th of December. Its name comes from the point where it seems to radiate, which is somewhere near the star Beta Ursae Minor, in the constellation of Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Dipper. ... |
13 December 2007
07:45 GMT |
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Leonid Meteor Shower is associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The event gets its name from the region of the sky, from which the meteors seem to radiate, since they stream down to Earth from a single point. The meteor shower takes place every year around the date of 17th of November, plus or minus a week, when the... |
16 November 2007
09:17 GMT |
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Saturn is a curious planet, not because it's a gas giant, the second largest planet in the solar system, or because of the fact that its equatorial and polar diameters differ by almost 10%. The most interesting aspect of this giant is the number of satellites.People often enjoy gazing at the Moon, our only natu... |
20 July 2007
04:20 GMT |
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