Sometime in the next few years—no one knows exactly when—three NASA satellites, each as heavy as an elephant, will go dark. They are already drifting and losing height little by little. They’ve been staring at the planet for more than two decades, much longer than anyone expected, helping us predict the weather, control wildfires, monitor … Read more
Sometime in the next few years—no one knows exactly when—three NASA satellites, each as heavy as an elephant, will go dark. They are already drifting and losing height little by little. They’ve been staring at the planet for more than two decades, much longer than anyone expected, helping us predict the weather, control wildfires, monitor … Read more
A reckless experiment in Earth’s atmosphere caused a desert metropolis to be flooded. That was the story last week when more than a year’s worth of rain fell in one day on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the driest regions in the world. Desert cities such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suffered … Read more
The environmental impacts of spaceflight are becoming increasingly apparent as more and more spacecraft are launched into Earth’s orbit. The growing number of satellites burning up in Earth’s atmosphere has worried scientists for years, and now a new paper explores how the emerging shell of “conductive dust” around the planet, resulting from satellite re-entry, could … Read more
There are still some interesting residual effects to be seen from the recent nosedive to Earth of the European Remote Sensing satellite, or ERS-2. After its launch in April 1995, ERS-2 studied our planet for almost sixteen years. Then, in 2011, the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to end the mission of the radar-guided … Read more
NASA’s newest Earth observation satellite has made it off the chopping block all the way into orbit. The nearly $1 billion PACE mission, which the Trump administration tried to cancel four times, launched early this morning (Feb. 8) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. When operational, … Read more
Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s science newsletter Wonder Theory. To receive it in your inbox, Register for free here. The moon is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from Earth, but humanity has played a major role in shaping it for more than sixty years. In fact, human exploration has … Read more
Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s science newsletter Wonder Theory. To receive it in your inbox, Register for free here. The moon is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from Earth, but humanity has played a major role in shaping it for more than sixty years. In fact, human exploration has … Read more
National weather analysts released their “billion-dollar disaster list” for 2023 on January 9, just as 2024 was off to a wild start. A snowstorm swept across the Plains and the Midwest, and the South and East faced flood risks from extreme rains. The US set an unwelcome record for weather and climate disasters in 2023, … Read more