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Of the roughly 8000 satellites that have been launched, which would seem to result in a veritable shooting ground for meteors, only one has ever been hit and subsequently destroyed by such a force. The European Space Agency’s communications satellite, Olympus, suffered that fate in 1993. Satellites are programmed to avoid events like the Perseid showers, but that year, the Perseids shifted.
Back in August 1993, the Perseids were expected to be anything but normal; Comet Swift-Tuttle had passed Earth’s orbit in 1992, and astronomers predicted an unusually intense shower. Spacecraft operators took steps to protect their vehicles.
But one spacecraft, the European communications satellite OLYMPUS, could not take precautionary measures. OLYMPUS already had been dealt an unlucky blow by a sporadic meteoroid, which disabled one solar array’s pointing system. So OLYMPUS was stuck facing the oncoming Perseid stream.
More on this story at the link, and incidentally- last year was the first time two satellites collided.
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Photo: ESA & SPIRE Consortium & HerMES consortia
In 1986, astronomer Felix J. Lockman discovered a curious region in space where there is little neutral hydrogen gas. This region, called the Lockman Hole, provides a keyhole through which astronomers can observe distant galaxies.
Using the Herschel Space Observatory, scientists at the European Space Agency decided to take a peek through the Lockman Hole and found thousands of galaxies. Each dot you see is an entire galaxy containing billions of stars:
The galaxies seen in this image are all in the distant Universe and appear as they did 10–12 billion years ago. They are colour coded in blue, green, and red to represent the three wavebands used for Herschel’s observation. Those appearing in white have equal intensity in all three bands and are the ones forming the most stars. The galaxies shown in red are likely to be the most distant, appearing as they did around 12 billion years ago.
Just think about it.
Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
This beautiful picture of Earth was taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta is on a mission to intercept the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which will happen in 2014. The brightest part of this picture is our South Pole. Link
(image credit: ESA)
