Free Republic

One of the most intriguing efforts is spearheaded by Airbus, and its target is the biggest hunk of junk in orbit — Envisat, the largest Earth observation satellite ever launched, weighing more than eight tons. The company wants to corral the floating behemoth with a giant space harpoon, and then drag it down into the atmosphere, where it will burn up on reentry. According to the BBC, the harpoon is currently being developed in England, and a small prototype will be tested during next month’s RemoveDebris mission. “If we can design a harpoon that can cope with Envisat, then it...

Link post: Geology Picture of the Week, April 27-May 3, 2003 (first comment has a bonus link to a picture of an erupting Russian volcano on Sakhalin Island)

"This interferogram used radar images from ESA’s ERS-2 and Envisat satellites to show an area of approximately 30 x 35 km around the city of Las Vegas in the US. The city is visible in the centre of the image as an area of bright colours, with the city’s major thoroughfares appearing as straight dark lines. The image was produced by the Oberpfaffenhofen Remote Sensing Technology Institute of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) under an ESA project to study the uses of joint ERS and Envisat data. An interferogram is an image generated by analysing the differences between two...