A large communications satellite has broken up in orbit, affecting users in Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and adding to the growing swarm of space junk clouding our planet’s neighbourhood. The Intelsat 33e satellite provided broadband communication from a point some 35,000km above the Indian Ocean, in a geostationary orbit around the equator. Initial reports on October 20 said Intelsat 33e had experienced a sudden power loss. Hours later, US Space Forces-Space confirmed the satellite appears to have broken up into at least 20 pieces. So what happened? And is this a sign of things to…
Author: Sara Webb, Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology
What does the edge of the universe look like? Lily, age 7, Harcourt What a great question! In fact, this is one of those questions humans will continue to ask until the end of time. That’s because we don’t actually know for sure. But we can try and imagine what the edge of the universe might be, if there is one. Looking back in time Before we begin, we do need to go back in time. Our night sky has looked the same for all of human history. It’s been so reliable, humans from all around the world came up…