NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has a close call with the 3,100-pound Cosmos 1805, a defunct Cold-War spy satellite, avoiding a near collision. NASA scientists don’t often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email [...]

A New Zealand researcher thinks that he has solved the riddle of a mysterious South Pacific island shown on Google Earth and world maps, but which doesn’t really exist. He thinks that a whaling ship from 1876 is to blame. The phantom landmass in the Coral Sea is shown as Sandy Island on Google Earth [...]

Three years ago, Jian-Wei Pan and his colleagues were able to quantum teleport information across 16 kilometers. This was one of the first major steps to the research team’s ultimate goal of teleporting photons to a satellite orbiting the Earth. Once this is achieved, it will establish the first links of the quantum Internet, which [...]

Underground nuclear tests can be detected in the skies and as a result, global satellite networks could become a powerful tool in order to detect clandestine underground nuclear explosions (UNE). The scientists presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union conference. The International Monitoring System (IMS) was established by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and has [...]

Most orbiting satellites point down towards Earth, but the satellites of the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology look sideways. Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) look towards the curving horizon in order to track the dozens of satellites that are part of the Global Positioning System. By tracking their radio signals, COSMIC is providing atmospheric data that [...]

One of the widest accepted models for the Moon’s formation states that a renegade, Mars-sized planet, named Theia, slammed into Earth 4.5 billion years ago, and pushed up debris that would eventually coalesce into a satellite. This theory has been able to predict and explain many facts, like the mass of Earth and the Moon, [...]

Last year, the USA was hit with floods in the Mississippi River, caused by major storms and melting snow. More than 3,000 square miles were flooded as the Army Corps of Engineers lifted the floodgates of the Morganza Spillway. The first photo was taken in August 2011 by NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite of the swollen [...]

NASA is currently basking in the success of their Curiosity mission to Mars, but if the space agency hopes to continue to lead the charge in space exploration, it needs to find new ways of doing old things. NASA’s PhoneSat project aims to launch low-cost satellites, easily assembled, and place them into orbit. Engineers have [...]

A team of MIT engineers have developed a new propulsion system that uses microscopic tips that, when stimulated with voltage, emit tiny beams of ions, which could be used to propel small satellites. A penny-sized rocket thruster may soon power the smallest satellites in space. The device, designed by Paulo Lozano, an associate professor of [...]

Launched on 5 July, the MSG-3 weather satellite used the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument to capture its first image of Earth. Today, the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on MSG-3 captured its first image of the Earth. This demonstrates that Europe’s latest geostationary weather satellite, launched on 5 [...]

NASA’s NuSTAR mission is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean on June 13, providing researchers with sharp images of black holes and other exotic objects by using specialized X-ray technology. Berkeley — NASA is scheduled to launch an orbiting X-ray satellite on Wednesday, June 13, that will open a new [...]

Research is underway on new equipment that will allow solar power to be gathered in space and transferred back to earth through microwaves or lasers, providing renewable energy for the future and providing power to disaster areas or outlying areas that are difficult to reach by traditional means. Solar power gathered in space could be [...]