A demonstration mission to test an idea to clean up space debris launched Monday morning local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Known as ELSA-d, the mission will exhibit technology that could help capture space junk, the millions of pieces of orbital debris that float above Earth.
The more than 8,000 metric tons of debris threaten the loss of services we rely on for Earth-bound life, including weather forecasting, telecommunications and GPS systems.
Been digging through some of that Landstat 1 satellite photos from the early 1970s and also some of the declassified CORONA satellite images from the early 1960s on Earth Explorer.
While the images are pretty low resolution – they’re satellite from 50 years ago – they’re still fascinating to get a glimpse of the earth from outer space a half century ago. I want to download more the next time I’m at the library, maybe tomorrow.
Aqua (EOS PM-1) is a NASA scientific research satellite in orbit around the Earth, studying the precipitation, evaporation, and cycling of water. It is the second major component of the Earth Observing System (EOS) preceded by Terra (launched 1999) and followed by Aura (launched 2004).