Tag Archives: space

Space Junk

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

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.

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.

NASA’s HD channel

20th AprilISS, space

NASA has started posting HD videos to its YouTube channel. One of the first videos posted was this incredible stop-motion video of the ISS in orbit around Earth.

Make sure you click the ‘ HD’ icon to watch in high definition.

Transit of the Moon

29th Septembermoon, space, transit

A transit is an astronomical term for when one object passes another. In the photograph below the planet Mercury is transiting across the Sun, as seen from the SOHO spacecraft.

Mercury transits the Sun

For the first time scientists have recorded the Moon’s transit of Earth. The footage was taken by NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft, the same spacecraft that fired a block of copper into a comet (9P/Tempel) to analyse the ejecta produced and thereby study the comet’s interior.