Brazil On May 31st, Air France flight AF447 went missing some time after it took off from Rio de Janeiro en route to Paris. It was realized that the flight had crashed into the ocean and even after 19 days of the crash, out of the 228 victims, only 49-50 bodies have recovered. Following is the update on the current findings - Almost all of the bodies recovered from the ocean had fractures to arms, legs and hips, and few had any clothing. The injuries are similar to injuries due to high altitude... Full Story

Brazil The Air Force Airbus A330 flight (flight no AF447) that went missing last Sunday night has now been declared as crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. Earlier Brazilian airforce planes had found life jacket, seats, etc. but now they have found two more important things - 23 Foot piece of the airplane and a 12 mile oil slick (shown in the picture).   Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim confirmed Tuesday that a 3-mile swath of wreckage, found more than 300 miles off the South American coast... Full Story

Space Junk is posing a greater threat to our current and future spacecraft.  There was a recent incident where space debris almost struck the International Space Station.  Just over a month ago, two satellites collided in space increasing the space debris to increase drastically. "The threat posed by orbital debris to the reliable operation of space systems will continue to grow unless the sources of space debris are brought under control," NASA's chief orbital debris... Full Story

Space, ISS The title seems to be from an 80's futuristic science fiction thriller, which does make it a real one in 2009. Today (March 12th 2009), the crew of International Space Station had a close call with space junk. All the three astronauts on board the ISS had to take refuge on a Russian escape capsule before returning inside the space station. The debris was a part of a mechanism to put a satellite in orbit. I measured 5 inches only but with a speed of 5.5 miles per second or 20,000 miles per... Full Story