Daily Show Jade Rabbit Commentary

Here’s a little fun for you today. Jon Stewart talked about China’s Jade Rabbit on 4 February 2014. For those of you at work, this is definitely NSFW. But it’s quite funny, and I always wondered about the name Jade Rabbit (yes, yes, i DO understand why the Chinese named it that). Anyway, for your […]

Why Space Matters: GEO Satellite operations, Part 6–Eclipse

All that you touch, all that you see… Yep, you guessed it! We’re going to talk about another issue common to geostationary (GEO) satellites: the eclipse. This issue is almost opposite from the problem discussed in Part 5 of the GEO lesson series. Instead of being overpowered by the sun’s energy, the satellite can’t function […]

The Earth’s “Love Handles”

Womencitizen is focusing on the Earth’s “Love Handles” with this 2 February post. University analysts are finding the odd shape of the Earth is keeping satellites in orbit longer than if it were a perfect sphere. If you’ll remember, the Earth isn’t shaped like a perfect sphere, but more like a squashed Halloween pumpkin. Such […]

The Satellite “Brown Note”

The DailyMail posted this article about the European Space Agency’s (ESA) use of sound in satellite development. The ESA likes to use satellites that can withstand the rigors of a rocket launch. One of those rigors is the loud, vibration-prone environment a satellite payload sits in during a rocket launch. Like the Mythbusters test to […]

Teens, Robots, and Comets

Clearancejobs.com posted another of my articles on their site. This one is about a Zero Robotics competition, pitting teens with “1337” robot satellite programming skills against each other in a world-saving competition. You’ll find this information, and more in my post: The Future: Comet-Battling Robot Satellites.