Lifeboat Foundation

When the koala fur trade began during the late 19th century, as many as 10 million koalas are thought to have existed in Australia. Since then, they have declined to a fraction of their historic range and numbers. Between 2000 and 2016, the states of Queensland and New South Wales bulldozed at least 885,000 hectares of forest and bushland that provided habitat for koalas, based on analyses of vegetation loss derived from satellite imagery.

Having previously classified the animal as “Least Concern” on its Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) uplisted the koala to “Vulnerable” in 2016. A report by the WWF in 2017 found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland and a 26% decline in New South Wales.

Estimates of their exact numbers vary considerably, but the Australian government has just published a new detailed analysis, showing the rapid and ongoing decline of koala populations in Eastern Australia. Following the disastrous wildfires of 2019–2020, they have now dipped below 100,000 to approximately 92,000 and are projected to fall by another third in this region during the next decade, possibly reaching 63,000 by 2032.

Ooooops!!

A rocket stage set to smash into the moon on March 4 is no longer believed to be a piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but rather a booster from a Chinese rocket sent to the moon in 2014, experts say.

Bill Gray, an astronomer and the developer of the asteroid tracking software Project Pluto, initially identified the errant space junk (which had been given the temporary name WE0913A) as the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, predicting that the debris would collide with the moon after hurtling through space for seven years.

Continue reading “Rogue rocket about to smash into the moon is from China, not SpaceX, experts say” »

The Sun’s solar activity cycle moves into high gear and knocks down 40 Starlink satellites. Peak is 2025. How many more could be impacted?

Increasing solar activity could play havoc with mega-constellations like Starlink in the coming years.

A powerful magnetic storm takes out most of a batch of Starlink satellites the day after launch.

Elon Musk’s company launched a Falcon 9 rocket bearing the 49 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 3), but a geomagnetic storm that struck a day later sent the satellites plummeting back toward Earth, where they will burn up in the atmosphere.

“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Preliminary analysis show[s] the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode to begin orbit-raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere.”

The satellites were hit by the storm just one day after launch.[/s].

The latest on some space debris…

The Falcon 9 DSCOVR’s booster: 7 Feb. 2022.

The animation above comes from 268, single, 4-second exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the booster, so it looks like a sharp dot, with surrounding stars moving on the background. East is up, South on the left.

Continue reading “The Falcon 9 DSCOVR’s booster going to hit the Moon: a video — 7 Feb. 2022” »

A Chinese satellite was spotted apparently clearing up space junk. But US officials are concerned the technology could be used against non-junk satellites.

Last month, a private satellite tracking company spotted a Chinese spacecraft apparently grabbing and throwing a dead satellite away into a “graveyard” orbit.