Tag: Satellites

As Space Threats Mount, U.S. Lags in Protecting GPS Services

The United States and China are locked in a new race, in space and on Earth, over a fundamental resource: time itself. And the United States is losing. Global positioning satellites serve as clocks in the sky, and their signals have become fundamental to the global economy — as essential for telecommunications, 911 services and […]

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Persistent “hiccups” in a far-off galaxy draw astronomers to new black hole behavior

At the heart of a far-off galaxy, a supermassive black hole appears to have had a case of the hiccups. Astronomers from MIT, Italy, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere have found that a previously quiet black hole, which sits at the center of a galaxy about 800 million light years away, has suddenly erupted, giving […]

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Debris from burning satellites could be affecting Earth’s magnetic field

The environmental impacts of spaceflight are becoming increasingly clear as more and more spacecraft are launched into Earth’s orbit. The growing number of satellites burning up in Earth’s atmosphere has concerned scientists for years, and now a new paper explores how the emerging shell of “conductive dust” around the planet that results from satellite re-entries […]

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Taiwan Is Building a Satellite Network Without Elon Musk

In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, […]

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Putin’s Nukes in Space Are Back to Scare Us Again

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was considering what became known as “Star Wars,” a plan to shield America from Soviet missiles by deploying up to thousands of weapons in space. At the same time, as a young science writer, I was reporting on how the rays from a single nuclear detonation in orbit could wipe […]

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Satellites are burning up in the upper atmosphere – and we still don’t know what impact this will have on the Earth’s climate

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Fionagh Thomson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University.  Elon Musk’s SpaceX has announced it will dispose of 100 Starlink satellites over the next six months, after it discovered a design […]

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Radar images reveal damage on Europe’s doomed ERS-2 satellite during final orbits

The European Space Agency has released images showing some of the final orbits experienced by a European satellite before its fiery reintroduction to Earth’s atmosphere. The school-bus-sized European Remote Sensing (ERS-2) satellite reentered our planet’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 21, almost 29 years after its launch in April 1995. The Tracking and […]

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Big, dead satellite predicted to fall to Earth today. Will any debris survive the fiery reentry?

A European Space Agency spacecraft is making an uncontrolled nosedive into Earth’s atmosphere – with elements of the 2.3-ton spent satellite likely to survive the plunge into purgatory. The exact time and place above Earth that the radar-scanning ESA European Remote Sensing (ERS-2) augers in is unknown, but a new prediction of the spacecraft’s demise […]

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Former Disney TV star Bridgit Mendler co-founds satellite ‘data highway’ startup

On Tuesday (Feb. 20), after a relatively long hiatus from the public eye, Bridgit Mendler announced the launch of her new satellite data startup, Northwood. Beyond introducing quite an interesting company — one that aims to make satellite technology more accessible by mass-producing data-retrieving ground stations on Earth — there’s another major reason the launch […]

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When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You

For decades, privacy experts have been wary of snooping from space. They feared satellites powerful enough to zoom in on individuals, capturing close-ups that might differentiate adults from children or suited sunbathers from those in a state of nature. Now, quite suddenly, analysts say, a startup is building a new class of satellite whose cameras […]

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Big, doomed satellite seen from space as it tumbles towards a fiery reentry on Feb. 21 (photos)

Photographs taken in space show a big dead satellite as it tumbled towards a fiery end in Earth’s atmosphere. Australian commercial imaging company HEO Robotics was able to capture images of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ERS-2 Earth observation satellite on Feb. 14, 2024 as the satellite made an ungraceful fall towards our planet. ERS-2, […]

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U.S. Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space

When Russia conducted a series of secret military satellite launches around the time of its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, American intelligence officials began delving into the mystery of what, exactly, the Russians were doing. Later, spy agencies discovered Russia was working on a new kind of space-based weapon that could threaten the thousands […]

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Russia’s nuclear anti-satellite weapon poses ‘no immediate threat’ to Earth, White House says

The White House has reassured the American public that a Russian nuclear space weapon, presently in development, poses no threat to people or property on the ground. Speculation and worries about the weapon surfaced on Wednesday (Feb. 14) after House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) publicly asked President Biden to “declassify all information relating to this […]

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Russia’s nuclear anti-satellite weapon poses ‘no immediate threat’ to Earth, White House says

The White House has reassured the American public that a Russian nuclear space weapon, presently in development, poses no threat to people or property on the ground. Speculation and worries about the weapon surfaced on Wednesday (Feb. 14) after House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) publicly asked President Biden to “declassify all information relating to this […]

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Russia’s Antisatellite Technology Poses No Immediate Threat, White House Says

A White House spokesman said on Thursday that antisatellite technology being developed by Russia had not been deployed and posed “no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.” “We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on earth,” the spokesman, John F. Kirby, told reporters. […]

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Intelligence About Russia Puts Focus on New U.S. Satellite Push

Hours after the news broke on Wednesday that the United States had picked up worrisome intelligence about Russia’s capacity to strike American satellites, the Pentagon sent a missile-tracking system into orbit, part of a vast new effort to bolster the military’s growing presence in space. The timing was coincidental. But it underscored how concerns about […]

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Russia planning space-based nuclear weapon to target satellites, US Congress told

Russia is reportedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon designed to disable or destroy satellites.  The United States Congress and America’s European allies were informed of Russia’s plans to develop the anti-satellite capability on Wednesday (Feb. 14). It’s unclear what the exact nature of the planned weapon is — that is, whether it involves detonating a […]

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Russian plans for space-based nuclear weapon to target satellites spark concern in US Congress

Russia is reportedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon designed to disable or destroy satellites.  The United States Congress and America’s European allies were informed of Russia’s plans to develop the anti-satellite capability on Wednesday (Feb. 14). It’s unclear what the exact nature of the planned weapon is — that is, whether it involves detonating a […]

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MIT researchers remotely map crops, field by field

Crop maps help scientists and policymakers track global food supplies and estimate how they might shift with climate change and growing populations. But getting accurate maps of the types of crops that are grown from farm to farm often requires on-the-ground surveys that only a handful of countries have the resources to maintain. Now, MIT […]

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Astronomers spot 18 black holes gobbling up nearby stars

Star-shredding black holes are everywhere in the sky if you just know how to look for them. That’s one message from a new study by MIT scientists, appearing today in the Astrophysical Journal. The study’s authors are reporting the discovery of 18 new tidal disruption events (TDEs) — extreme instances when a nearby star is […]

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Study: Stars travel more slowly at Milky Way’s edge

By clocking the speed of stars throughout the Milky Way galaxy, MIT physicists have found that stars further out in the galactic disk are traveling more slowly than expected compared to stars that are closer to the galaxy’s center. The findings raise a surprising possibility: The Milky Way’s gravitational core may be lighter in mass, […]

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