The Global Positioning System, better known as GPS, has come to affect countless aspects of our daily lives, from directing our holiday aeroplanes to enabling us to drive round an unfamiliar city without any map other than the one on our mobile phone. At the risk of making myself sound like a scary stalker, I… Continue reading GPS.
Tag: Space
Happy New Year 2017
Happy New Year to all my readers and followers. I hope that you all will continue to read and enjoy my blog 🙂 For many people living in the USA the most memorable event of the coming year will not be the inauguration of the new president but the total solar eclipse, which I'll talk about… Continue reading Happy New Year 2017
Chinese manned space programme
On 18 November two Chinese astronauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, landed back on Earth after spending 33 days in space, an event which was hardly reported in the western media. During their mission they spent 30 days aboard the Tiangong-2 space station. Image from the Chinese National Space Administration Tiangong-2, shown in the mission patch above, is the second… Continue reading Chinese manned space programme
Schiaparelli’s landing on Mars
The Schiaparelli Spacecraft tragically failed to land on Mars, crashing at 300 km/h. Launched on March 14, 2016, with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, it aimed to study Martian surface conditions. It only planned to be operational for a week because it lacked solar panels, relying solely on a non-rechargeable battery.
The Perseids
For revised post containing more tips on how to view the Perseids see The Perseids 2021. On 12 August you may be lucky enough - if it's a clear night and you are somewhere without too much light pollution - to see a phenomenon called the Perseids, which is a meteor shower which appears at… Continue reading The Perseids
Explaining Science 