Tag Archives: Space debris

Science

Space Sail Experiment Expedites Disposal of Satellite

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ADEO being deployed from the ION Satellite Carrier during the December 2022 test.
Gif: High Performance Space Structure Systems/Gizmodo

There’s a lot of junk orbiting our planet, from tiny flecks of paint to defunct rocket stages. While solutions to remove pre-existing debris have been developed, a private space company in Germany has successfully tested a method to deorbit satellites at the end of their life to prevent them from becoming space debris in the first place.

The Drag Augmentation Deorbiting System (ADEO) braking sail was developed by High Performance Space Structure Systems as a way to deorbit satellites at the end of their mission. In a space-based test in December 2022 called “Show Me Your Wings,” ADEO was deployed from an ION Satellite Carrier built by private space company D-Orbit. ADEO successfully pushed the satellite carrier out of its orbit, sending it into the atmosphere to burn up.

“Show Me Your Wings” marks the final in-flight qualification test of ADEO as a proof-of-concept after tests began in 2018. The European Space Agency hopes ADEO will help prevent future decommissioned satellites from becoming orbiting space debris, which can pose a threat to space operations.

“We want to establish a zero debris policy, which means if you bring a spacecraft into orbit you have to remove it,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher in a press release.

ADEO – Deorbit Sailing on Angel Wings

ADEO is a 38-square-foot (3.5-square-meter) sail made up of an aluminum-coated polyamide membrane secured to four carbon-fibre reinforced arms that are positioned in an X-shape. The sail increases surface drag when deployed from a satellite, leading to a more rapidly decaying orbit. ADEO can also be scaled up or down depending on the size of the satellite it’s attached to. The largest version could reach 1,076-square-feet (100-square-meter) with the smallest sail being 37-square-foot (3.5-square-meter).

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NASA estimates that 27,000 pieces of space debris are orbiting Earth, most of which are larger than a softball and traveling at speeds around 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour). While ESA has previously announced plans to remove pre-existing space debris in the form of decommissioned satellites, ADEO is an attempt at preventing satellites from ever becoming debris in the first place.

More: Jeff Bezos’s Girlfriend Is Leading an All-Women Blue Origin Spaceflight

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Defunct Satellite and Rocket Stage Nearly Collide in Potential ‘Worst-Case Scenario’

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Conceptual image of space junk in Earth orbit.
Illustration: SCIPHO (AP)

An old rocket body and military satellite—large pieces of space junk dating back to the Soviet Union—nearly smashed into each other on Friday morning, in an uncomfortable near-miss that would’ve resulted in thousands of pieces of debris had they collided.

LeoLabs, a private company that tracks satellites and derelict objects in low Earth orbit, spotted the near-collision in radar data. The company, which can track objects as tiny as 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter, operates three radar stations, two in the U.S. and one in New Zealand.

The two objects whizzed past each other at an altitude of 611 miles (984 kilometers) on the morning of Friday, January 27. LeoLabs “computed a miss distance of only 6 meters [20 feet] with an error margin of only a few tens of meters,” the company said in a tweet.

That is unbelievably close, as Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell conveyed in a graphic posted to Twitter. The SL-8 rocket body (NORAD ID 16511), specifically its second stage, has been in space since 1986, while the Cosmos 2361 military satellite (NORAD ID 25590), known as Parus, launched to low Earth orbit in 1998. A collision between the two objects would have produced thousands of new debris fragments that would have lingered in Earth orbit for decades.

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The conjunction happened in an orbital “bad neighborhood” located between 590 and 652 miles (950 and 1,050 km) above the surface, according to LeoLabs. This band has “significant debris-generating potential” in low Earth orbit “due to a mix of breakup events and abandoned derelict objects,” the company explained in a series of tweets. The so-called bad neighborhood hosts around 160 SL-8 rocket bodies along with their roughly 160 payloads launched decades ago. LeoLabs says around 1,400 conjunctions involving these rocket bodies were chronicled between June and September 2022.

LeoLabs describes this type of potential collision between “two massive derelict objects” as a “worst-case scenario,” saying it would be “largely out of our control and would likely result in a ripple effect of dangerous collisional encounters.” Indeed, a collision on this scale would most certainly accelerate the ongoing Kessler Syndrome—the steady accumulation of space debris that threatens to make portions of Earth orbit inaccessible.

Related story: What to Know About Kessler Syndrome, the Ultimate Space Disaster

Near-misses in space are becoming increasingly common, whether it’s conjunctions between defunct satellites or clouds of debris that threaten the International Space Station. Avoidance maneuvers are now a steady fixture for satellite operators, with SpaceX, as an extreme example, having to perform over 26,000 collision avoidance maneuvers of its Starlink satellites from December 1, 2020 to November 30, 2022.

In addition to focusing on collision avoidance, LeoLabs recommends the implementation of debris mitigation and debris remediation efforts. This could take the form of sensible guidelines having to do with the removal of satellites once they’re been retired, as well as the introduction of debris removal technologies.

More: The FCC Wants a 5-Year Deadline to Deorbit Defunct Satellites



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Space Rock Strike on Webb Telescope Was Just Bad Luck, NASA Team Says

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In late May, the Webb Space Telescope’s tranquil commissioning process was interrupted by an uncommonly large micrometeoroid strike on one of the $10 billion observatory’s mirrors. Now, a NASA-led analysis of the event indicates the impact was a statistical anomaly and the telescope will be less susceptible to space rock damage in the future.

Micrometeoroids are pieces of fast-moving space debris. Most micrometeoroid impacts on spacecraft are too small to be measured; according to a NASA release, Webb averages one to two measurable strikes per month.

A July report by the Space Telescope Science Institute found that the May strike caused noticeable damage to the telescope’s C3 segment, one of Webb’s 18 hexagonal mirrors. In spite of the impact, the team’s assessment was that Webb “should meet its optical performance requirements for many years.”

“Even after this event our current optical performance is still twice as good as our requirements,” said Mike Menzel, Webb lead mission systems engineer at NASA, in an agency release.

In other words, the impact didn’t affect the telescope’s ability to do its job: observing some of the oldest light in the universe, in order to better understand the first stars and the evolution of galaxies. Webb has even turned its infrared eye on our solar system neighbors.

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At that time, the Webb team’s chief concern was whether the May strike was representative of more hits to come or just bad luck. The new analysis—conducted by a group of NASA experts, the telescope’s mirror manufacturer, and the Space Telescope Science Institute—indicates the latter.

After the May impact, NASA turned Webb away from the micrometeoroid avoidance zone, to shield the mirrors from the tiny space rocks. Some of the particles can zip by at 22,000 miles per hour, meaning they can pack a punch if striking a sensitive part of the telescope.

“Micrometeoroids that strike the mirror head on (moving opposite the direction the telescope is moving) have twice the relative velocity and four times the kinetic energy, so avoiding this direction when feasible will help extend the exquisite optical performance for decades,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA Goddard, in an agency release.

Webb will still be able to make observations in the direction of the avoidance zone, but it will do so at another time of year, when Webb is at a different point in its orbit and thus less susceptible to harmful micrometeoroid strikes.

More: Webb Telescope Captures Stunning Protostar ‘Hourglass’ in Space

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Satellite Billboards Are a Dystopian Future We Don’t Need

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Artist’s conception of a cubesat ad showing the Olympic rings.
Image: Shamil Biktimirov/Skoltech

A feasibility study suggests millions of dollars can be made by using fleets of bright cubesats to form advertisements high above Earth. It’s a clearly terrible idea, as it would tarnish our already-threatened views of the night sky.

The purpose of the new paper, published in Aerospace, was to evaluate the “economic feasibility of a space advertising mission that would launch a formation of satellites into orbit to reflect sunlight and display commercials in the sky above cities,” according to a Skotech press release. Shamil Biktimirov, a research intern at Skoltech’s Engineering Center, is the first author of the paper.

Biktimirov and his colleagues, which included a team from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, envision 50 or more cubesats working in concert to create images that are visible from highly populated urban areas. Factors considered included fuel consumption and longevity of the satellites, the population sizes of target cities, and local ad costs. The researchers estimate that a single mission would cost about $65 million. “An unrealistic idea as it may first seem, space advertising turns out to have a potential for commercial viability,” wrote the researchers in their study.

“It will not surprise you to learn that I am not a fan,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote to me in an email. The “bright advertising messages themselves will be localized to urban areas,” but the “brightness of these solar sail satellites will still be substantial in other places and times,” which is something the Russian researchers didn’t consider, he said. To which McDowell added: “The entire idea of this kind of inescapable space-borne advertising is fundamentally dystopian.”

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The Russian researchers, in full anticipation of this kind of negative response, defended their idea, saying the ads would only appear at dawn or dusk (the cubesats require at least some exposure to sunlight to become bright and visible) and that the space-based ads only make economic sense for “large cities that are already exposed to permanent light pollution.”

The authors propose that the ads appear above the most profitable city within reach for a full minute before moving on to the next victim, er, city. This would be possible as the satellites would be placed in circular Sun-synchronous orbits that straddle the day-night boundary. This type of orbit “guarantees that formation satellites will always be lit by the Sun, and its access area will constantly include points on Earth where the lighting condition is satisfied,” the scientists write. An estimated $2 million in advertising revenue could be made with this approach, so the whole thing could be paid off in about a month, the scientists argue. A single fleet of cubesats could operate in this fashion for “several months” depending on the configuration, they write.

These sorts of ideas are upsettingly common. Back in 2018, Rocket Lab launched Humanity Star, a 3-foot-wide mirror, into space. The ghastly diamond-shaped Orbital Reflector, also launched in 2018, never really worked and is now officially space junk. Russian company StartRocket and PepsiCo toyed with the idea three years ago, threatening to promote energy drinks with artificial constellations.

Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you have to do that thing. Space-based ads may be feasible, but they’d represent an eyesore of cosmological proportions, tarnishing our natural, unobstructed views of space. That our cities are already flooded with light pollution and ads on the ground is hardly an excuse to embark on such an endeavor. Here’s hoping that sensibility will prevail and that ads for soft drinks and fast food stay on the ground.

More: Obnoxiously Large Satellite Could Mean Bad News for Astronomers Observing the Skies.

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China’s Out-of-Control Rocket Predicted to Crash on July 31

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The Long March 5B shortly before its launch on July 24, 2022.
Photo: Liu Huaiyu (AP)

Experts are predicting that the gigantic core stage of a recently launched Long March 5B rocket will crash to Earth within a matter of days, but the precise location remains impossible to guess.

The Long March 5B rocket blasted off on July 24 from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan. The rocket successfully delivered the Wentien lab to low Earth orbit, where it docked with China’s Tiangong space station some 13 hours later.

Like previous launches of Long March 5Bs, however, the core stage—which lacks controlled reentry provisions—entered into an Earth orbit, and a quickly deteriorating one at that. The 25-ton (22.5-metric-ton) core stage, designated CZ-5B, is now poised to make an uncontrolled re-entry.

Experts with The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital Reentry and Debris Studies (CORDS) have calculated a likely date for the arrival of this wayward rocket body. They analyzed data from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Surveillance Network to devise the estimate, which suggests the rocket will return to Earth on July 31 at 7:52 a.m. UTC (3:52 a.m. ET), with an error bar of plus-minus 22 hours.

“For tracking and predicting reentries, our team uses public data sets that are generated when an object being tracked passes over one of a collection of sensors across the planet,” Marlon Sorge, technical fellow and executive director at The Aerospace Corporation’s CORDS, explained to me in an email.

The Space Surveillance Network tracks objects in space using radar and optical sensors at multiple locations around the planet. These sensors “observe and track objects that are larger than a softball in low Earth orbits and basketball-sized objects or larger in higher geosynchronous orbits,” Sorge said. “The sensors can determine which orbit the objects are in, and that information is used to predict close approaches, reentries, and the probability of a collision.”

The expected geographical range remains excessively high, with the rocket body potentially reentering somewhere between 41 degrees north and 41 degrees south latitude. “It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint,” the company said in a tweet. The Aerospace Corporation will be updating its tracking page as the estimate gets refined over time.

“Due to the uncontrolled nature of its descent, there is a non-zero probability of the surviving debris landing in a populated area—over 88 percent of the world’s population lives under the reentry’s potential debris footprint,” according to an Aerospace Corporation statement. The company says that objects of this size don’t burn up in the atmosphere and that typically 20% to 40% of the total mass of a large object will reach the ground, depending on the object.

Normally, core stages don’t reach orbit and are instead guided into the ocean or over sparsely populated areas. In the case of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reusable rocket, the first stages perform controlled vertical landings on the surface or on drone ships.

This will mark the third time that the core stage of a Long March 5B has entered orbit after launch and fallen back to Earth in an uncontrolled manner, so this trait appears to be a feature of the rocket rather than a bug. Two years ago, debris from an out-of-control core stage fell onto an inhabited area along the west coast of Africa, while debris from a Long March 5B launched last year crashed into the Indian Ocean near the Maldives. In both cases no one was hurt, but scientists have recently raised concerns that, with all the rockets being launched these days, someone might eventually get badly injured or even killed.

“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, said in an agency statement in wake of the 2021 incident. “It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris. It is critical that China and all spacefaring nations and commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of outer space activities.”

China is planning to launch its Mengtian space station module this October, which means we’ll get to do this all over again in just three month’s time.

More: Russia says it’ll leave the ISS after 2024.



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China Tests Drag Sail For Removing Space Junk

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This kite-like space sail will help deorbit a rocket component within two years.
Image: Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology

Engineers in China have successfully deployed an ultra-thin sail attached to a rocket part to expedite its departure from low Earth orbit and reduce the amount of space junk aimlessly floating above our planet.

The 269-square-foot (25-square-meter) sail unfurled after launching from a Long March 2D rocket on June 24. Although the mission was not publicized beforehand, the Shanghai Academy of Spacecraft Technology (SAST) announced a few days later that the drag sail had been successfully deployed to assist with the deorbiting of the rocket component, which won’t happen for another two years or so.

When unfurled, the kite-shaped sail increases the atmospheric drag working against the object it’s attached to, thereby accelerating orbital decay. The rocket component will then meet its fate much sooner, deorbiting and burning up in Earth’s atmosphere on its way down. It’s a potential low-cost solution to the ever-growing problem of space debris.

The recently launched drag sail is made from super thin material, about the same thickness as one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. The component that it’s currently attached to, the payload adapter of the rocket’s upper stage, weighs around 661 pounds (300 kilograms) and is orbiting the Earth at an altitude of approximately 305 miles (491 kilometers), according to SAST. The rocket is expected to get dragged down to lower altitudes with increased friction due to the sail and reenter Earth’s atmosphere in about two years.

China has been a bit reckless lately when deorbiting its rockets. In April, debris that was likely caused by a Chinese rocket that disintegrated on re-entry fell onto a western village in India. Similarly in May 2021, a Chinese Long March 5B rocket fell into the Indian Ocean after making an uncontrolled reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. A year earlier in May 2020, another incoming Long March 5B rocket caused pieces of debris to fall onto two villages in Cote d’Ivoire, damaging people’s homes.

The drag sail will help remove the rocket from Earth’s orbit sooner than it would have on its own, but it’s not clear whether China will account for where pieces of the rocket might fall in order to avoid populated areas.

It’s hoped that the new technology will aid in clearing orbiting space junk. The Department of Defense’s global Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking more than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, and many more smaller pieces in the near-Earth environment, according to NASA. Ideally, as countries continue to expand their space programs, they will also figure out a way to deorbit their spacecraft not only more quickly, but also less harmfully.

More: The Coolest Images Taken by NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft.

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Test to Maneuver ISS with Cygnus Spacecraft Didn’t Go as Planned

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The Cygnus space freighter approaching the ISS on February 21, 2022.
Photo: NASA

NASA is currently evaluating the ability of docked Cygnus spacecraft to serve as boosters for the International Space Station, but a recent test of the concept was quickly stopped, for reasons that aren’t yet clear.

The engine firing of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus NG CRS-17 spacecraft began at 11:20 a.m. ET on Monday, June 20, and it was supposed to last for exactly 5 minutes and 1 second, but NASA called the whole thing off after just 5 seconds, according to an agency press release. Officials with the Cygnus mission said “the cause for the abort is understood and under review,” NASA added, but without providing any more detail. In an email to Gizmodo, a NASA spokesperson said the agency will provide more updates on its space station blog later this week.

The purpose of the test was to evaluate the ability of docked Cygnus spacecraft to serve as functional ISS boosters. The space station is equipped with its own propulsion system, but it’s often inadequate for making major positional adjustments. The ISS, in orbit some 260 miles (418 km) above the surface, occasionally needs to move, whether for operational reasons or when having to dodge other satellites or potentially dangerous space debris.

The ISS configuration as it appeared on June 3, showing the location of Cygnus-17 and Progress 81.
Image: NASA

Such was the case just a few days ago. On June 16, a docked Russian Progress 81 spacecraft fired its thrusters for 4 minutes and 34 seconds, in a procedure that provided extra distance from the predicted track of space debris, namely a fragment from the former Russian satellite Cosmos 1408, which Russia deliberately destroyed earlier this year in a brazen anti-satellite weapons test. The crew was apparently “never in any danger,” but without the orbital adjustment, “it was predicted that the fragment could have passed within around a half mile from the station,” according to a NASA press release.

With so many satellites now orbiting the Earth, and with so much useless junk and debris up there, these maneuvers are now commonplace. Trouble is, Russia has threatened to leave the ISS (potentially as early as 2025), and given that Progress vehicles are typically used as ISS boosters, that presents a bit of a problem for NASA. Hence the test with the Cygnus.

The failed test with Cygnus doesn’t mean the spacecraft isn’t up to the task, but it would be nice to know what went wrong. That said, NASA is planning a re-do on Saturday, June 25, at which time the agency will once again fire Cygnus’s engines. If the test works, it will represent the first time that a commercial spacecraft was used to boost the ISS (at least to my knowledge). As an aside, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has hinted that his company’s Dragon should also be capable of performing boosting duties if called upon.

This scheduled re-test is still unofficial, as NASA needs to discuss the new plan with its ISS partners, according to the press release. Assuming all goes well, the expendable Cygnus vehicle will depart the station with its load of trash on June 28 and burn-up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Related: The ISS Backflipped Out of Control After Russian Module Misfired, New Details Reveal.



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Science

Space Telescope Hit by ‘Unavoidable Chance Event’

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(Newser)
–
The massive mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope has been hit by what NASA calls an “unavoidable chance event”—a strike from a piece of space debris larger than they expected. NASA says one of the mirror’s segments was hit by a micrometeoroid, which it defines as a piece of debris smaller than a grain of sand, but the telescope is still performing above expectations, Live Science reports. The telescope reached its final orbit a million miles from Earth in January. NASA says the mirror has already had “four smaller measurable micrometeoroid strikes that were consistent with expectations,” but the one in late May was “larger than our degradation predictions assumed.”

“We always knew that Webb would have to weather the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light and charged particles from the sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and occasional strikes by micrometeoroids within our solar system,” Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “We designed and built Webb with performance margin … to ensure it can perform its ambitious science mission even after many years in space.” NASA says the impact on the C3 section of the 18-piece mirror was larger than anything it could model while the telescope was still on Earth.

NASA says the mirror segments can be adjusted to lessen distortion caused by damage and to protect the mirror from events like meteor showers, CNN reports. “As a result of this impact, a specialized team of engineers has been formed to look at ways to mitigate the effects of further micrometeoroid hits of this scale,” NASA says. The agency says the Webb team is also learning more about the dust environment at the telescope’s current location, which will help future missions. (Read more James Webb Space Telescope stories.)

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Russian Motor Spontaneously Explodes in Orbit, Creating Debris Cloud

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Space agencies are trying to figure out ways to mitigate the effects of space debris.
Photo: Arne Dedert (AP)

An old Russian motor that’s been aimlessly floating through space for more than a decade has finally met its demise in a sudden explosion, producing at least 16 shards of orbital debris that now threaten satellites and other objects.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron confirmed through Twitter that a SOZ ullage motor exploded in space on April 15. At least 16 pieces of debris were created by the event, which the defense squadron is now tracking. The motor was used to launch three Russian GLONASS satellites in 2007, boosting them into the right orbit once they were in space. The motor had been orbiting idly in space since then, but with leftover high energy rocket propellant still packed inside.

“It’s sort of like a little bit of a time bomb, but without an actual timer,” astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Gizmodo.

Something likely happened within the motor that involved the rocket propellant, causing it to explode. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time a discarded SOZ ullage motor has made a big mess in space. At least 54 of these motors have already exploded, and there are about 64 of them still in orbit, according to McDowell. This latest motor breakup incident is adding to the mounting problem of space debris, or space junk, caught in Earth’s orbit.

“When I saw this, I was massively unsurprised,” he said. “These things have been popping off once or twice a year for many years, and it’s really been a problem.” The motor is an older Soviet rocket design left over from the Cold War, whereas newer designs of spacecraft are designed to avoid these issues. “This particular issue of leftover rocket stages blowing up has mostly been designed out in modern rockets,” McDowell said. “The best practice nowadays is to passivate spacecraft when they’re at the end of their mission.” Spacecraft passivation is the removal or deactivation of all potential sources of explosions.

But even if these older designs are no longer being sent to space, the pre-existing population of these relic motors could continue to generate more debris, and create further risks to satellites, which could in turn result in even more debris—a serious problem known as Kessler Syndrome.

More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris are tracked by the Department of Defense’s global Space Surveillance Network (SSN) sensors, with many more smaller pieces of debris in the near-Earth environment, according to NASA. These uncontrolled pieces of junk, whether a retired satellite or a small chunk of metal, travel at high speeds, running a potential risk of crashing into an operational spacecraft and causing considerable damage.

In June 2021, for example, a piece of space junk crashed into the International Space Station, damaging one of its robotic arms. Later in November, astronauts aboard the ISS had to take shelter from a cloud of space debris generated by the destruction of the defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-1408—the result of a reckless Russian anti-satellite test. China’s anti-satellite test in 2007 created more than 3,000 pieces of large debris.

Space agencies are hoping to find solutions to the ongoing orbital littering, with the European Space Agency recently commissioning the first debris removal mission, currently slated for a 2025 launch. The ClearSpace-1 spacecraft will feature four arms designed to clean up space junk in Earth’s orbit.

Big pieces of space debris “have the most risk of not just blowing up, but of hitting each other and creating lots more debris,” McDowell said. “And so if you want to avoid a sort of chain reaction, then getting rid of the big ones is what you want to do, and I think that that is going to happen.”



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NASA spots football stadium-sized asteroid fast-approaching Earth

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NASA is currently tracking an asteroid that is approximately the size of a football stadium as it makes a close approach with Earth.

The asteroid is dubbed “Asteroid 2015 DR215,” and according to NASA’s Asteroid Watch database, the asteroid will make a safe fly-by Earth at a distance of 4,160,000 miles. It should be noted that while 2015 DR215 is classified as a “Potentially Hazardous Object,” it doesn’t mean that it could collide with Earth. NASA classifies any space rock that comes within 4.6 million miles of Earth, or 19.5 times the distance to the moon, as a potentially hazardous object.

Other criteria for an object to be classified as potentially hazardous includes being larger than 500 feet in diameter. As for 2015 DR215, while the asteroid may be stadium-sized, it will pose no risk to Earth as it passes by on March 11 at an incredible speed of 19,000 miles per hour. Notably, this isn’t the first time 2015 DR215 has made a close approach with Earth, as its last fly-by was in March 2021. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Jak Connor

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science and space news. Jak’s love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms. Instead of typical FPS, Jak holds a very special spot in his heart for RTS games.

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