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.
Wits University scientists revealed fragments of a rare daylight fireball seen on August 25, 2024, over the Eastern Cape, South Africa. These meteorites were found in the town of Nqweba by a 9-year-old girl Elize du Toit.
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.
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…
A recent study shows that a plume of debris produced by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission’s impact on Dimorphos in 2022, could reach Mars and Earth within 7 years, creating a new meteor shower.
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 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.
A newly discovered asteroid designated 2024 RL3 flew past Earth at a distance of just 0.106 LD or 0.0027 AU (40 835 km / 25 373 miles) from the center of our planet at 17:15 UTC on September 4, 2024.
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft successfully passed through Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, completing a significant achievement in its mission to explore Jupiter. The mission, led by ESA, tested the RADiation-hard Electron Monitor (RADEM), designed to measure high-energy particles in severe settings.
A small asteroid detected by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona, U.S. at 05:43 UTC today, September 4, 2024, is expected to harmlessly impact Earth’s atmosphere over the Philippines at around 16:39 UTC. The object is designated as asteroid 2024 RW1.
