• Partial lunar eclipse of September 18, 2024, visible from Americas, Europe, and Africa

    ByHarsha Borah

    The partial lunar eclipse of September 18, 2024, will be visible from several continents, including the Americas, Europe, and Africa. It is part of a series of astronomical phenomena in 2024 that will last more than four hours, with the partial phase beginning at 00:41 UTC and peaking at 02:44. During this period, a small piece of the Moon will pass through Earth’s umbral shadow, darkening around 8.5% of its surface.

  • SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew conducts first-ever commercial spacewalk

    ByHarsha Borah

    On September 12, 2024, SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission made history by conducting the first commercial spacewalk from a spacecraft. This extravehicular activity (EVA) took place 738 km (459 miles) above Earth and was designed to test SpaceX’s new EVA suits as well as further commercial space exploration.

  • Very bright fireball illuminates night sky over Iraq

    ByRishav Kothari

    The Iraqi Meteorological Organization and Seismology confirmed on Saturday, September 7, 2024, that the mysterious bright light seen over the skies of Iraq on Friday, September 6 was caused by a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, denying the earlier speculation that it might have been earthquake lightning.

  • ESA’s Salsa (Cluster 2) satellite making controlled reentry over Pacific Ocean on September 8

    ByRishav Kothari

    After 24 years of studying Earth’s magnetosphere, the ESA’s Salsa satellite from the Cluster mission is on course to reenter the atmosphere in a controlled descent. The reentry, scheduled for 18:48 UTC, on September 8, 2024, is part of a broader effort by the ESA to mitigate space debris risks by ensuring the satellite disintegrates safely over the South Pacific.

  • ISS astronaut captures bright green meteor exploding over Cairo, Egypt

    ByHarsha Borah

    On September 2, 2024, at 20:12 UTC, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, commander of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission, recorded a beautiful timelapse footage of a dazzling green meteor explosion. The event was captured from the International Space Station (ISS) as it entered Earth’s atmosphere over Cairo, Egypt.

  • Videos of Asteroid 2024 RW1 breaking up over Luzon, Philippines

    ByRishav Kothari

    A newly-discovered asteroid, identified as 2024 RW1, entered Earth’s atmosphere over Luzon, Philippines, on September 5, 2024, creating a spectacular green fireball. This marks the ninth asteroid ever detected before impact. Asteroid 2024 RW1 was discovered at 05:43 UTC on September 5 by Jacqueline Fazekas at the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona, part of the…

  • Atlas 5 Centaur Rocket Body breaks up in orbit into a debris cloud of 40 plus objects

    ByRishav Kothari

    The body of the Atlas 5 Centaur rocket that delivered the GOES 17 satellite in 2018 broke up in a highly elliptical orbit on September 6, 2024, at around 05:21 UTC. The breakup was observed by Slingshot Aerospace at around 05:32 UTC from an observation site in Chile. They detected a debris cloud of more than 40 objects related to the fragmentation of the rocket, which currently doesn’t appear to pose threat to any active spacecraft.

  • Chinese researchers advocate for nuclear weapon use against asteroid threats

    ByHarsha Borah

    Chinese experts propose using nuclear weapons as a last resort to protect Earth from potential asteroid crashes. The team, led by Zhang He of the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, stressed that current planetary defense technologies, including NASA’s DART mission, may be insufficient against larger asteroids.