Some 10,000 U.S. soldiers protect weather balloons and navigation and spy satellites from threats from above. It isn’t the only space force out there. Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on 4 October 2023. (Credit: Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix) Not many military...
Technology depends on rare earth minerals, but their extraction can harm our planet. Asteroids offer a plentiful source of valuable elements. In the future, mankind will go to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to mine for the vast wealth that is within the...
Way up over our heads satellites and rocket parts orbit the Earth. Sometimes pieces of metal fall towards us. Most burn up in the atmosphere, but not all. A giant metal ring that fell from space onto a Kenyan village in December 2024. (Credit: Kenyan Space Agency)...
Journalism gave one reporter the ability to travel the world to be there when things happen. For News Decoder, her stories take us into outer space. When you read a published article on News Decoder, you’re only seeing part of the story. Who is writing it? What went...
Way up over our heads satellites and rocket parts orbit the Earth. Sometimes pieces of metal fall towards us. Most burn up in the atmosphere, but not all. Flames come out of a satellite falling towards Earth. (Illustration by News Decoder) Back in 1978, a Soviet...
The little space copter that could finally puttered out. But our hopes for stepping on Martian soil? That keeps chugging along. An illustration of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s surface. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)...
On Christmas Eve 55 years ago an astronaut snapped a photo that caught the world’s attention. The global selfie made us rethink our place in the universe. On 24 December 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders became the first humans...
For 50 years the folks who travel into space have cooperated above the borders that divide those on land. But as we find space not so empty will lines be drawn? Astronaut Donald K. Slayton and cosmonaut Aleksey A. Leonov are seen together in the Soyuz Orbital Module...
The sun might be 93 million miles away, but its flares cause blackouts and GPS to break down here on earth. Get ready. We are approaching the solar maximum. Passengers on the MS Trollfjord watch as an aurora covers the sky along the Norwegian coast on 19 October 2019....
Many of the more than five thousand satellites orbiting the earth are capable of producing high-resolution images. International agreements aren’t as clear. A U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot looks down at a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovers over the...