This chart shows a recent survey of satellites and space junk in Low Earth Orbit, listed by the country responsible for creating it. The third country might surprise you: China has left almost as much debris as America or Russia, despite having a much shorter history in space. In fact, …
How do spacecraft navigate in space ?
How does a space probe like Voyager 2, which was launched in 1977, visit the 4 outer planets and travel over 17 billion kilometres over 40 years with almost next to nothing in the way of fuel. By the time Voyager 2 had reached Neptune, it had swung by Jupiter, …
Animal Astronauts – The Space Races Unwitting Pioneers
Everyone remembers Yuri Gagarin the first man in space but before his famous flight, there had been many more living space pioneers who didn’t really have any choice about being strapped into an experimental rocket. Animal Astronauts – The Space Race’s Unwitting Pioneers The tidal wave of propaganda generated by Sputnik …
How Did NASA Lose a Mars Space Probe Because of Maths?
For all the knowledge of the thousands of scientists and engineers in the space industry, sometimes the old adage “The best-laid plans of mice and men” can equally be applied to their efforts. This was certainly the case on the Mars Climate Orbiter mission of 1999 and this would go …
Sputnik – 60 years on from the Start of the Space Race
That simple little beep, beep, beep was the sound that started the Space Race. It was heard for the first time 60 years ago, when, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into a low Earth orbit. It was only a metal ball, 22 inches or about …
Space Station Collision – Mir Crash with Progress Supply Vessel
Of all the 100’s of thousands of pieces of space junk and nearly 1500 satellites in orbit around the earth, it may come as a surprise that so far there has been only one major collision involving a manned craft and it affected both Russians and Americans. After the Apollo …
How the First Spacewalk Nearly Ended in Disaster – Alexei Leonov Voskhod 2
When Alexey Leonov made the world’s first spacewalk in 1965, it was hailed as yet another great success for the USSR in the space race against America. It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that the west found out that while it may well have been made …
Interstellar Space Arks – Humanities Exodus From Earth
Earlier this year, Professor Stephen Hawking warned the human race that, unless we found a way to colonise another planet in the next hundred years, we would face a very real threat of extinction. He said: “With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is …
Hubble Trouble – How did the Space Telescope Mirror End Up Flawed ?
In April of 1990 the American Shuttle Discovery launched up from the Earth, into a higher orbit than ever before, to deploy a special payload: the Hubble Space Telescope. Above even the thinnest part of the atmosphere, Hubble would be able to see far-off stars and galaxies without distortion and …
How Australia Helped Save Apollo 13
When you mention the words “Apollo” and “NASA” most people will immediately think of America, that big U.. S.. A.. on the side of the Saturn V rockets at take off is an awe inspiring sight and a great piece of national branding but success in Space requires a global …