Aiming for Apophis

Rick Binzel had three key messages to convey to attendees at the start of a workshop held in April at a European Space Agency center in the Netherlands: “Apophis will miss the Earth. Apophis will miss the Earth. Apophis will miss the Earth.”

NASA’s strategy for space sustainability

At about 1:30 am EST on Feb. 28, NASA’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics Mission (TIMED) spacecraft passed close to a defunct Russian satellite, Cosmos 2221. The close approach was alarming enough that NASA sent reporters an email in the middle of the night, alerting them to the conjunction and a blog post about it. “Although the spacecraft are expected to miss each other, a collision could result in significant debris generation,” NASA warned.

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact

NASA’s interstellar explorer Voyager 1 is finally communicating with ground control in an understandable way again. On Saturday (April 20), Voyager 1 updated ground control about its health status for the first time in 5 months. While the Voyager 1 spacecraft still isn’t sending valid science data back to Earth, it is now returning usable information about the health and operating status of its onboard engineering systems.