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Smog Comparisons Over India, Nepal, and Tibet As Seen From Space

Smog Over India, Nepal, and Tibet

True color image over northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet. Note the large amount of smog/pollution over India relative to Tibet, and how the mountains keep it all localized.

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Tracking Typhoon Hagupit From Orbit

Typhoon Hagupit

NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites flew over Typhoon Hagupit from Dec. 6 through Dec. 8 and the MODIS instrument that flies aboard both satellites provided images of the storm as it moved through the country.

Hayabusa2 Launched By Japan

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and JAXA successfully launched the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 26 with the Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2 onboard at 1:22:04 p.m. on December 3, 2014 JST from the Tanegashima Space Center.

Northern Sumatra Dealing With Smoke From Fires

On February 27, 2014, the Wall Street Journal and Southeast Asia Realtime reported that: "the plantation-rich province of Riau on Indonesia's Sumatra Island has declared a state of emergency as fires set for land clearing have sent pollution levels soaring and smoke made breathing difficult for thousands."

NASA and JAXA Launch the GMP Satellite

From the Tanegashima Space Center near the southernmost tip of Japan, NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a joint mission to study global measurements of rainfall and snowfall abroad JAXA's H-IIA rocket.

Chang'e-3 Lands On The Moon And Deploys Yutu Rover

Update: The Yutu rover has been deployed and is driving on the lunar surface.

China's Chang'e-3 Heads For The Moon

China's Chang'e-3 lunar rover Yutu ("Jade rabbit") left Earth today aboard a Long March IIIB rocket today. Liftoff occurred at 12:30 pm EST from Xichang launch facility in in China's Sichuan province.

India's Mars Orbiter Placed in Mars Transfer Trajectory

The critical manoeuvre to place India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in the Mars Transfer Trajectory was successfully carried out in the early hours of today (Sunday, December 1, 2013).

Fires in China As Seen From Space

Shuangyashan is a coal mining prefecture-level city located in the eastern part Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China, bordering Russia's Khabarovsk and Primorsky krais to the east.

The New Race for the Moon

The rise of China, rapidly accelerating technology, the increasing pace of lunar discoveries and the growing viability of lunar mining are drawing multiple countries and companies into development of new missions to the Moon.

Chinese Manned Shenzhou-10 Spacecraft Lands Safely in Inner Mongolia

The Chinese Shenzhou-10 landed safely in Inner Mongolia at 8:08 p.m. ET (8:08 a.m. Beijing time) returning the three astronauts to Earth after a 15 day mission. The astronauts were reported to be in good shape and feeling well. Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping performed experiments and did two docking tests with the orbiting Chinese space lab module Tiangong-1, one automatic and the other manual.

New JAXA President First Monthly Report

It has been one month since I assumed the JAXA president's post, and it has surely been a very busy month while I candidly feel that JAXA's splendid intellectual and national properties should become more widely available to people who are not necessarily related to the space field. Now, I really perceive that JAXA has graduated from the technological verification phase that has been a goal of JAXA's assignment in the last 10 years, and entered into the next phase as JAXA has successfully performed 19 consecutive launches of H-IIA and H-IIB launch vehicles combined.

Chinese Shenzhou-10 Launches on 15 Day Mission

The Chinese manned spacecraft Shenzhou-10 launched early this morning at 5:38 a.m. ET from the the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on a 15 day mission.

Images: China's Shenzhou-10 Poised For Launch Tuesday

China's Shenzhou-10 is poised to liftoff on Tuesday at 5:38 a.m. ET from the the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The spacecraft will hav three astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping.

Developing Agriculture From the Sky

From 800 km high, Earth-observing satellites are assisting international development organisations with their work in developing countries. Satellites enable objective observations of the status of remote rural areas consistently over space and time.

UK and Kazakhstan Agree Collaboration in Space

The UK Space Agency and the National Space Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan (KAZCOSMOS) have today (7 March 2013) signed an agreement outlining cooperation in the area of space activities.

Iran Sends a Monkey into Space

According to Iran state media, Iran launched a suborbital rocket last week with a monkey onboard and recovered the capsule a short time later with the monkey still alive. The space capsule was code-named Pishgam (Pioneer).

Air Quality Suffering in China

Residents of Beijing and many other cities in China were warned to stay inside in mid-January 2013 as the nation faced one of the worst periods of air quality in recent history.