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In a tense moment for space safety, two satellites—NASA’s TIMED spacecraft and the defunct Russian Cosmos 2221—came alarmingly close to smashing into each other above Earth, prompting concerns about the risks of space debris.
An unspecified defect in early model Starlink satellites has prompted SpaceX to preemptively deorbit the units before they potentially fail and become hazards in low Earth orbit. While the company remains confident that the deorbiting of these problematic units will prevent any issues, this incident underscores the…
After 13 years of slow orbital decay, a legacy satellite will finally be put out of its misery by plunging through Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up into tiny fragments.
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Mario Tama/Getty Images)
New research this week is the latest to show that microplastics have polluted just about everywhere on Earth. Scientists discovered plastic particles in cloud samples collected from atop a mountain in Eastern China.
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