Ever been at a party and landed in a heated argument about exactly where the International Space Station (ISS) is passing over at that very instant? Me neither, but it’s probably happened to someone. Assuming you were in that situation, and lacked access to your smartphone or any other form of internet connected device, you […]
Logically we understand that the other planets in the solar system, as well as humanity’s contributions to the cosmos such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station, are zipping around us somewhere — but it can be difficult to conceptualize. Is Jupiter directly above your desk? Is the ISS currently underneath you? […]
On February 13th of 2023, ARCA of the kilometre cubic neutrino telescope (KM3NeT) detected a neutrino with an estimated energy of about 220 PeV. This event, called KM3-230213A, is the most energetic neutrino ever observed. Although extremely abundant in the universe, neutrinos only weakly interact with matter and thus capturing such an event requires very […]
In all likelihood, asteroid 2024 YR4 will slip silently past the Earth. Based on the data we have so far, there’s an estimated chance of only 2.1% to 2.3% that it will collide with the planet on December 22nd, 2032. Under normal circumstances, if somebody told you there was a roughly 98% chance of something […]
There are no two ways about it—space will kill you if you give it half a chance. More than land, sea, or air, the space environment is entirely hostile to human existence. Precision-engineered craft are the bare minimum just to ensure human survival. Even still, between the vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites, and equipment failures, there are […]
Did you ever hear of a satellite called Parcae (pronounced like park-eye)? If you haven’t, don’t feel bad—it was, after all, a top-secret project only revealed in July 2023. [Ivan Amato] not only heard about it, but also wrote a fascinating peek into the cloak-and-dagger world of cold-war spy satellites for this month’s IEEE Spectrum. […]
One of the more popular activities in the ham radio world is DXing, which is attempting to communicate with radio stations as far away as possible. There are some feats that will earn some major credibility in this arena, like two-way communication with Antarctica with only a few watts of power, long-path communication around the […]
Presumably the same DSKY unit installed in the simulator at MIT. The Display/Keyboard unit – DSKY for short – is the primary way that Apollo-era astronauts communicated with the onboard computers. Not all DSKYs ended up in space, however, with the MIT hosting a simulator that features one of these units. Unfortunately the unit that […]
The OTC Station 29.8 meter dish at Carnarvon, Australia, in need of a bit of paint. (Credit: ABC News Australia) Recently the 29.8 meter parabolic antenna at the Australian OTC (overseas telecommunications commission) station came back to life again after nearly forty years spent in decommissioning limbo. This parabolic dish antenna shares an illustrious history […]
The big news story of the week of course has been the wildfires in California, which as of Saturday have burned over 30,000 acres, destroyed 12,000 structures, caused 150,000 people to evacuate, and killed eleven people. Actually, calling them wildfires underplays the situation a bit because there are places where they’ve clearly become firestorms, burning […]