Category Archives: General

Space Junk

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The space around Earth is full of junk, as you can see in the pictures below from the European Space Agency. Click to enlarge.

space-junk space-junk2 space-junk3

It’s so full of junk that recently a US Iridium satellite and a Russian Strela satellite collided, 500 miles above the Siberian Taymyr peninsula travelling at a combined speed of 26000 miles per hour.

satellite-collision

The collision destroyed both satellites and created a huge cloud of dangerous debris. The amount of debris in orbit around Earth is becoming a serious problem – recently astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to move to the emergency Soyuz escape pod because it looked like a piece of debris might collide with the ISS, damaging it catastrophically.

Nobody fixes anything any more

This weekend my laminator broke. A mix of laminate and paper managed to wrap itself around the rollers and gummed up the whole mechanism.

I could have quite easily (and cheaply) bought a new one. But I didn’t. I took the old one apart and fixed it.

laminator-open

Not only did I save myself some money, I also learnt a little bit more about how a laminator works. So next time something breaks why not try fixing it before you buy a new one? What’s the worst that could happen? It’s broken anyway; you can only make it more broken.

This is what had jammed itself in the mechanism:

laminate-crumpled

ATHLETE

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The All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) rover is a next-generation robotic lunar exploration vehicle.

athlete-climb

ATHLETE is designed to load and transport heavy loads across the rough lunar surface. Each rover can carry half a ton and multiple rovers can work together to transport heavier loads.

athletes-rolling

ATHLETE can roll and walk across the lunar surface and can even use a grappling hook to rappel down steep slopes.

athlete-rappel

There are some amazing videos of ATHLETE in action at its JPL homepage.