space traffic
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New Mini-Moon Might Actually Be Old Space Junk Coming Back to Haunt Us
Earth will soon welcome a temporary mini-moon, but this newly detected object, an apparent asteroid, might actually be of unnatural origin — a booster rocket dating back to the 1960s.
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A Powerful New Telescope Is About To Get Screwed By Elon Musk’s Starlink Constellation, Research Suggests
As astronomers eagerly await the opening of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, anxious operators have run tests to see how well the system might work when low Earth orbit is cluttered with satellite megaconstellations, similar to the one being built by SpaceX. Unsurprisingly, the results were not good.
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Astronomers Are Increasingly Worried About How Satellite Megaconstellations Will Disrupt Science
Organisers of an American Astronomical Society conference in Hawaii held a special session to discuss the ways in which satellite megaconstellations, such as the one currently being built by SpaceX, are poised to disrupt telescopic observations. The astronomers also proposed potential solutions to this emerging problem.
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SpaceX Says A ‘Bug’ Prevented It From Receiving Warning Of Possible Satellite Collision
The European Space Agency was forced to perform a “collision avoidance manoeuvre” to prevent its Aeolus spacecraft from potentially smashing into one of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, in what is quickly becoming an all-too-common occurrence. According to SpaceX, it never received the expected alert that a collision was possible.