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Over the course of the past 200 million years, our planet has experienced four major geological periods (the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous and Cenozoic) and one major ice age (the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation), all of which had a drastic impact on plant and animal life, as well as effecting the course of species evolution. For decades, geologists have also understood that these changes are due in part to gradual shifts in the Earth’s orbit, which are caused by Venus and Jupiter, and repeat regularly every 405,000 years. But it was not until recently that a team of geologists and Earth scientists...

A new analysis of the data obtained when the interstellar object Oumuamua flew through the solar system in October 2016 suggests that it is tumbling in a chaotic manner, and that the surface is spotty....Dr Fraser explains: “Our modelling of this body suggests the tumbling will last for many billions of years to hundreds of billions of years before internal stresses cause it to rotate normally again."

Before you launch a rocket, you need to count the moose. Maritime Launch Services, the company that hopes to build a spaceport on a parcel of Nova Scotia land that juts into the ocean near Canso in Guysborough County, must first complete an environmental review — including counting seasonal numbers of local flora and fauna — before the province agrees to the project. “We’ve hired a contractor to help us do the study,” MLS president Steve Matier said Monday. “We could conceivably complete that effort at the end of this year.” “It’s part of the process, and it’s understood. We...

We believe, based on comments made by two remarkable experts on this subject, Dr. Peter Pry of emptaskforce.org and Ambassador Hank Cooper of highfrontier.com, the latter of whom worked in the Reagan Administration, that Iran already has the bomb and is working on figuring out how to get it into a vehicle and send it our way. It will not, however deliver annihilation to any single city or cities in the conventional sense. That would be pointless, futile and suicidal. Instead, working together with North Korea, they will seek to take out our electric infrastructure and anything electronic via satellites...

It’s known as the Haas 2CA, the latest in a series of rockets being developed by the New Mexico-based aerospace company. If all goes as planned, this rocket will be the first SSTO rocket in history, meaning it will be able to place payloads and crew into Earth’s orbit relying on only one stage with one engine. The rocket was unveiled on Tuesday, March 28th, at their company headquarters in Las Cruces. The rocket is currently seeking FAA approval, and ARCA is working diligently to get it ready for its test launch in 2018 – which will take place at...

From the University of WisconsinFrom rocks in Colorado, evidence of a ‘chaotic solar system’Plumbing a 90 million-year-old layer cake of sedimentary rock in Colorado, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University has found evidence confirming a critical theory of how the planets in our solar system behave in their orbits around the sun.Alternating layers of shale and limestone near Big Bend, Texas, characteristic of the rock laid down at the bottom of a shallow ocean during the late Cretaceous period. The rock holds definitive geologic evidence that the planets in our solar system behave...

NASA made the decision to leave the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter, in its current orbit that cycles around the gas giant every 53 days. The choice hinges on worries surrounding Juno's main engine, which displayed some out-of-the-ordinary readings as the team was preparing to shorten the probe's orbit. “Juno is healthy, its science instruments are fully operational, and the data and images we’ve received are nothing short of amazing,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The decision to forego the burn is the right thing to do – preserving a valuable asset so...

A propulsion system problem has left a U.S. military communications satellite short of its intended orbit, leaving a key communications network over the Middle East, Africa and Asia without a spare, officials said on Tuesday.

More details about China’s human spaceflight missions are filtering through after the country announced its launch Tiangong-2 and Shenzhou-11 launch schedule for 2016. On Sunday it was announced that the Tiangong-2 space lab will launch in the third quarter of 2016, and be visited by the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft in Q4. Shenzhou-11 will carry two Chinese astronauts, popularly referred to as taikounauts derived from the Chinese ‘taikongren’ (太空人). It has now been stated that two taikonauts will stay in space for 30 days. While this pales into comparison with Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly’s Year in Space, it will be doubling China's...

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun. The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet's existence through mathematical modeling...

WASHINGTON — A mysterious Russian military satellite parked itself between two Intelsat satellites in geosynchronous orbit for five months this year, alarming company executives and leading to classified meetings among U.S. government officials. The Russian satellite, alternatively known as Luch or Olymp, launched in September 2014 and seven months later moved to a position directly between the Intelsat 7 and Intelsat 901 satellites, which are located within half a degree of one another 36,000 kilometers above the equator. At times, the Russian satellite maneuvered to about 10 kilometers of the Intelsat space vehicles, sources said, a distance so close that...

We all know and love the moon. We're so assured that we only have one that we don't even give it a specific name. It is the brightest object in the night sky, and amateur astronomers take great delight in mapping its craters and seas. To date, it is the only other heavenly body with human footprints. What you might not know is that the moon is not the Earth's only natural satellite. As recently as 1997, we discovered that another body, 3753 Cruithne, is what's called a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth. This simply means that Cruithne doesn't loop around...

Right now, there are more than 300,000 pieces of debris larger than a centimeter in diameter orbiting Earth. They range from tiny shards of metal to deactivated, decades-old satellites. Most are shrapnel from discarded rocket stages that have exploded after use, or satellites that have collided. Colloquially, all this debris is usually called "space junk." Together, the Department of Defense and NASA track the orbits of the 19,000 or so pieces of junk that are larger than a softball, alerting satellite operators when any satellite — including the International Space Station — is in danger, so they can move it.

Cell phones and in-dash navigation systems rely on GPS satellites, Dish and DirecTV obviously use satellite feeds, and satellite communications systems offered by the likes of Inmarsat and Iridium continue to proliferate across various industries. Just how crowded is it getting up there above the Earth’s atmosphere?

Object seen in orbit after North Korea carries out controversial rocket launch By Jethro Mullen, CNN December 12, 2012 -- Updated 0907 GMT (1707 HKT) Hong Kong (CNN) -- North Korea surprised and angered the international community Wednesday by launching a long-range rocket that appeared to put a satellite in orbit, a breakthrough for the reclusive, nuclear-armed state. The North Korean regime said the rocket had successfully blasted off from a space center on its west coast and delivered a satellite into its intended orbit. The launch followed a botched attempt in April and came just days after Pyongyang suggested...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Oct 9 - A prototype communications satellite flying as a secondary payload aboard a Space Exploration Technologies Falcon 9 rocket was sent into the wrong orbit because of a problem during launch Sunday evening, officials said Tuesday. One of the nine Merlin engines powering the Falcon 9 rocket shut down early, though the other engines burned longer to make up for the loss of thrust, saving the primary mission of delivering a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station for NASA. The rocket blasted off at 8:35 p.m. EDT Sunday (0035 GMT Monday) from Cape Canaveral...

Although it did not go unreported, convicted Chicago political influencer Tony Rezko's 10-year prison sentence was treated as an afterthought during the short Thanksgiving workweek. Also an afterthought: the amazing facility with which President Obama has completely escaped Rezko's orbit in the liberal mainstream media's standard narrative.

China has joined two space vehicles together in orbit for the first time. The unmanned Shenzhou 8 craft, launched earlier this week, made contact with the Tiangong-1 space lab at 1729 GMT. The union occurred over China itself. Being able to dock two space vehicles together is a necessary capability for China if it wants to start building a space station towards the decade's end. Although no astronauts were in the Shenzhou craft this time, future missions will carry people. Tuesday's procedure (Beijing time 0029, Thursday) took place at an altitude of about 340km. It was automated but overseen on...

Click here to watch the video. The thin yellow line encircling the Earth is the ionosphere.