Space dust hits the Earth every day in the form of meteorites. As much as 300 tonnes of the stuff falls to the Earth each day. Of course, most of it is dust or small rocks, and goes unnoticed by the majority of people. But every so often, a larger rock plummets to Earth, and if it’s big enough, it will make it’s presence known. One such meteor flew through the atmosphere less than 48 hours ago in the Northeast USA. The bright flashes occur when a space rock, called a meteoroid, hits the atmosphere of the Earth, which rapidly...
A bright fireball appeared in the sky over Hawaii a couple of days ago. It appeared to break into several pieces and burn up in the atmosphere. Naturally one would expect it to be a meteor, but if you take a look at the video below, it sticks around a little bit too long for that. Aside from the over-the-top reaction of those watching, it’s not as exciting and quick as a meteor. In fact, most meteors can move through the sky at up to 70 km/s, enough to burn up quickly and leave a bright flash in their wake....
Every time a comet slowly approaches the inner solar system, astronomers get excited. We are hopeless romantics, wishing the new comet will brighten enough to be labeled the next ‘comet of the century.’ Yet we have had our hearts broken before, more often than not. The most recent fizzled comet was nearly two years ago with the burn up of comet ISON as it passed close to the Sun. It made for a spectacular view for SOHO and SDO looking at the Sun, but for the rest of us it was just another heartbreak. But once again we have hope; A...
Eight minutes after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian Proton-M rocket experienced a catastrophic failure in its third stage rocket, resulting in the complete atmospheric burn-up of the rocket and its payload, a Mexican Communications Satellite. After launching at 11:47am local time in Kazakhstan, the rocket experienced an emergency situation 497 seconds into the flight, reported as a failure in the rocket’s Breeze-M third stage. The carrier rocket was launching the Mexsat 1 communications satellite, known as Centenario, into orbit, in a contract with the Mexican government. After reaching a 161 Km altitude, the rocket failed and fell back to...
