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Thread: Current Events in Astronomy

  1. #121
    My inner Mulder wants to believe, but my inner Scully remains skeptical.

  2. #122

  3. #123
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    As the movie 'Gravity" showed us, space junk can have catastrophic results.
    Have to wonder about the trade off between launching inexpensive payloads, and the continual growth in number of objects than can present a danger to future projects.


    Could Cubesats Trigger a Space Junk Apocalypse?
    Tereza Pultarova, Space.com Contributor


    The growing popularity of small satellites as well as the upcoming deployment of low-Earth orbit mega-constellations will likely greatly increase the amount of space junk as well as the frequency of catastrophic collisions, a study led by the United Kingdom's University of Southampton suggests.

    Tiny satellites such as cubesats have democratized access to space. But for space environment researchers, the technology, praised for its low cost and short timeline from design to launch, is something of a headache.

    The European Space Agency (ESA) has already experienced a nearly "Gravity"-like scenario last August, when a 0.4-inch (1 centimeter) fragment cut a 16-inch (40 cms) hole into a solar panel of the agency's flagship Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-1A. [Space Particle Slams Into Satellite, Damages Solar Array (Video)]

    "Seven fragments have been produced in that accident that are now tracked by the surveillance system," Holger Krag, the head of ESA’s Space Debris Office, said yesterday (April 18) during an opening session of the 7th European Conference on Space Debris in Darmstadt, Germany.

    "One of them generated a conjunction alert with sister spacecraft Sentinel-1B, which is flying in the same orbit but 180 degrees apart," Krag added.

    The low-Earth orbit (LEO) environment is getting increasingly cluttered, with some 100 to 150 cubesats being deployed each year. Over the next 50 years, the trend might result in a 50 percent increase in the number of collisions far more damaging than that involving Sentinel-1A and a 30 percent increase of space debris objects larger than 4 inches (10 cm), experts have said.

    "There are two trends that concern us when it comes to space debris," Hugh Lewis, aerospace engineering lecturer from the University of Southampton, said at the conference. "One is the deployment of very large constellations such as OneWeb or SpaceX. The other is the upturn in the number of small satellites being launched into low-Earth orbit."
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    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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  4. #124
    My inner Mulder wants to believe, but my inner Scully remains skeptical.

  5. #125
    Alltime10s
    10 Astronomical Events That Will Happen In Your Lifetime


  6. #126
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    One of the final Cassini photos, showing Earth as a distant speck through Saturn's rings, is reminiscent of that famous photo of Earth taken by Voyager as it passed Neptune all those years ago. The Voyager photo encouraged Carl Sagan to write a book, The Pale Blue Dot.

    Maybe someone will likewise be inspired by this photo, and give us another profound self perspective.

    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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  7. #127
    From space.com
    Planet 10? Another Earth-Size World May Lurk in the Outer Solar System
    While a Mars sized object would likely be a lot harder to detect than a Neptune size object on the plus side it may be considerably closer.
    Last edited by Wally; 06-26-2017 at 03:48 PM.
    My inner Mulder wants to believe, but my inner Scully remains skeptical.

  8. #128
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wally View Post
    From space.com
    Planet 10? Another Earth-Size World May Lurk in the Outer Solar System
    While a Mars sized object would likely be a lot harder to detect than a Neptune size object on the plus side it may be considerably closer.
    Would be pretty amazing if we are spotting all those extra-solar worlds, only to discover we overlooked a "new" planet within our own solar system.
    Talk about missing the forest for the trees!
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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  9. #129
    From phys.org
    Possible first sighting of an exomoon

    At the size of Neptune that would make it larger than Earth. Could this planetary system qualify as a binary planet?
    My inner Mulder wants to believe, but my inner Scully remains skeptical.

  10. #130
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    A new source of gravity waves for LIGO to detect?
    Rumours swell over new kind of gravitational-wave sighting

    Gossip over potential detection of colliding neutron stars has astronomers in a tizzy.
    By Davide Castelvecchi
    Astrophysicists may have detected gravitational waves last week from the collision of two neutron stars in a distant galaxy — and telescopes trained on the same region might also have spotted the event.

    Rumours to that effect are spreading fast online, much to researchers’ excitement. Such a detection could mark a new era of astronomy: one in which phenomena are both seen by conventional telescopes and ‘heard’ as vibrations in the fabric of space-time. “It would be an incredible advance in our understanding,” says Stuart Shapiro, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

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    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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