Tagged: orbit

Astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein discovered a space object recently that has an orbit around the sun and also stretches into the Oort cloud—they have named it 2014 UN271. The researchers made the discovery while studying archival images collected for the Dark Energy Survey...

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit delivered satellites from three countries into space Wednesday, its second successful rocket launch from a plane. The company’s modified 747 jet dubbed Cosmic Girl jet took off from California’s Mojave Desert, carrying the 70-foot (21-meter) rocket beneath its left wing. Once...

When the U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Launch-2 (TacRL-2) mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on June 13, it carried a payload designed and built in record time by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). LLNL provided a three-mirror reflective telescope and sensor for the...

As fighter pilots in World Wars I and II were acutely aware, attacking an enemy aircraft from the direction of the sun was a very effective tactic to catch your target by surprise. The glare of sunlight provided cover until it was too late for...

A mysterious “continuously active” object known as a “Trojan asteroid” has been discovered in Jupiter’s orbit, making it the first known object like it. The object, known as 2019 LD2, has a “comet-like tail” made up of gas and dust. It was first observed by...

We tend to imagine space as empty, and most of it is, but travel 50-1,243 miles (80-2,000 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface, in the zone known as low-Earth orbit (LEO), and you’ll find a stacked-up superhighway of objects. This is where everything from weather satellites...