News In Space!

Most of you probably know [url=http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/orbital_debris_050202.html]orbiting debirs[/url] is posing an increasingly serious problem for future space missions. [quote]Here’s the heavenly clutter count as of December 29, 2004. There were 9,233 objects large enough to be tracked and catalogued by the USSTRATCOM Space Surveillance Network. Of this total there were 2,927 payloads, along with 6,306 object classed as rocket bodies and debris. That’s the stats as listed in the January issue of The Orbital Debris Quarterly News, issued by the NASA Johnson Space Center Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston, Texas.[/quote] That's a whole lot of fast-moving crap. In other news, researchers managed to find a little more of the universe's [url=http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/missing_matter_050202.html]missing matter[/url]. [quote]The new observations, by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, reveal two huge intergalactic clouds of diffuse hot gas. These clouds are the best evidence yet that a vast cosmic web of hot gas contains the long-sought missing matter, scientists said Wednesday.[/quote]