Category Archives: Space Technology

UK celebrates 50 in Space

Posted by on April 27, 2012 No comments

The UK is celebrating 50 years in space. Ariel 1 was the first satellite to be designed and operated by the UK. It was launched on 26 April 1962 Ariel-1 in cooperation with NASA. The Ariel programme which lasted for several years, with the subsequent launch of Ariel 2 through 6, set the field for several areas of space exploration, like X-ray astronomy, space dust research, space based radio astronomy, solar radiation detection and much more.  You can read more about the history of UK in Space here…

Watch the video ’50 years of the UK in space,’ by the UK Space agency

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Swiss technology set to clean up space debris

Posted by on February 16, 2012 No comments

The Earth’s orbit is full of all kinds of floating debris; a growing crowd of abandoned satellites, spent rocket stages, bits of broken spacecraft, and fragments from collisions are rocketing around the planet at breathtaking speeds.

In 2007 China shot down one of its own aging weather satellites, in a kind of target practice in low Earth orbit. The satellite was 500 miles above the Earth’s surface. The explosion created a cloud of debris in space, adding to the amount of “space junk” circling the Earth.

The Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching CleanSpace One, a project to build the first prototype in a family of “de-orbiting” satellites.

 

Technorati Tags: , , , ,