Month: February 2023

ESA successfully unfurls sail to drag spacecraft out of orbit

NeRD

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully unfurled a sail aboard a used cubesat to help drag the spacecraft down into Earth’s atmosphere and out of orbit. The Drag Augmentation Deorbiting System (ADEO) was deployed from an orbiting Ion satellite carrier in late December 2022. The sail will help catch more of Earth’s tenuous upper atmosphere, allowing the cubesat to come down in a matter of months rather than the years it would otherwise take, ESA officials said. The 38.7-square-foot (3.6 square meters) aluminum-coated polyamide membrane sail provides a passive…

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See the green comet near Mars in the night sky this week

NeRD

If you haven’t yet braved the cold winter nights to see the green comet currently in the night sky, this week might be your best chance.  Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will be positioned close to Mars in the Taurus constellation, making it easier to locate as it dims as it speeds away from Earth. The comet will appear beside the Red Planet from Feb. 9 through Feb. 14, after which it will begin approaching the Orion and Eridanus constellations. For viewers in the continental United States, Mars is positioned high…

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Previous Chinese spy balloons over US were classified as UFOs: report

NeRD

We may now know how some Chinese spy balloons managed to fly into U.S. airspace under the radar. A Chinese surveillance balloon drifted through American skies for about a week before an F-22 fighter jet shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday (Feb. 4).  That same day, the U.S. military revealed that similar Chinese balloons had intruded on U.S. airspace at least three times during the administration of President Donald Trump, which ran from January 2017 to January 2021. Those previous incursions didn’t make the news.…

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Intuitive Machines now targeting moon’s south pole for delayed lunar landing mission

NeRD

An ambitious moon mission set to touch down at the south pole will delay its landing this year by a few months. Intuitive Machines will push back its IM-1 south pole moon landing for NASA to June instead of in the spring, the company announced Monday (Feb. 6).  The news confirms a NASA request from September 2022 to redirect the mission to the south pole instead of one of the moon’s equatorial regions. That was reported in Ars Technica (opens in new tab) last fall when Intuitive Machines said it…

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‘Failed star’ brown dwarf imaged in nearby star cluster (photos)

NeRD

Astronomers have captured a direct image of a nearby brown dwarf, an astronomical body larger than a planet but not big enough to initiate the internal nuclear fusion that powers a star. For this reason, brown dwarfs are often referred to as “failed stars,” but the dividing line between planets and stars is still poorly understood. The newly imaged brown dwarf, designated HIP 21152 B, has a mass between 22 and 36 times that of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet. The research team also found that the atmosphere of…

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