Oct 3, 2023
Dish to pay $150,000 for failing to properly dispose of satellite and violating the FCC’s anti-space debris rule
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Dish to pay $150,000 for failing to properly dispose of satellite and violating the FCC’s anti-space debris rule
Giant disco ball is plummeting back to Earth
Giant disco ball is plummeting back to Earth
Dust off old Donna Summer albums and celebrate the premature return of New Zealand’s giant “disco ball” satellite as it drops down to Earth from outer space. Just like the Age of Disco, it will completely disintegrate, leaving only groovy memories. (more…)
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Season 5 - Episode 5 “Disaster”
No more containers
I am having a moment where I am utterly excited about something and simultaneously terrified of where that excitement might lead.
The image above is incredible for many reasons. It was the first photo taken by Neil Armstrong during the first moon walk, just over 45 years ago. That in itself is pretty amazing.
Even more incredible: This historic photo features a white object in the lower left corner. No joke: it's a space garbage bag.
I knew that astronauts vented human waste and other fluids out into space, and was aware of the occasional unintentionally dropped spare glove, tool, or camera. I'd read that sometimes astronauts (particularly cosmonauts) hand-push objects they want to destroy into low orbits for convenient incineration upon reentry to the atmosphere.
But there's something about the banal iconography of the garbage bag, and that it features so prominently in this moment of technical triumph, that has sent me down a wonderful rabbithole of frenetic research, trying to figure out the basic preliminary contours of a potential chapter on space litter -- something I am beginning to see as a separate category from other orbiting space junk.
Thus the being simultaneously terrified. History dissertations are already overblown as it is. And, as one of my mentors says, a good dissertation is a done dissertation.
But space litter. SPACE LITTER.
The thing found on Mars
Looks like a piece of trash to me, but that still begs the question of how it survived entry into the martian atmosphere. According to JPL, it isn't anything from the rover, crane, or entry capsule.
Check out the trailer for Space Junk 3-D. The goal of the film is to raise awareness on how space litter threatens future space exploration and communications satellites.
It opens at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in March. Check out national and international select theater listings here.