On October 16th 2020, about 1.000 kilometers (621 Miles) above Earth, two derelict space craft almost collided. One a soviet era navigation satellite launched in 1989, the other a Chinese rocket booster launched in 2009 passed within 12 meters of each other. A collision would have created a large cloud of debris which would pose …
In the year 1859 earth was hit by the strongest geomagnetic storm in the last 500 years. The damage inflicted to technical systems in the mid-19th century was limited, but what if this would happen today?
The Chelyabinsk asteroid It was a cold winter morning, February 15th 2013, the people in and around the Russian city of Chelyabinsk were going about their day’s work as usual, when at about 09:20 local time suddenly a small 20-meter asteroid appeared in the sky, exploding in midair after entering Earth’s atmosphere. With an estimated …
In the year 1983, the Cold War was approaching its climax. The Soviets had put more than 400 SS-20 “Saber” missiles into service since the mid-1970s, nicknamed the “Terror of Europe”. Two thirds of the modern rockets were aimed at Western Europe, at places such as London, Paris, Bonn and Vienna. Each rocket had an …
On June 15th, 1991, the Pinatubo volcano located in the Philippines erupted in what would later become one of the three most powerful volcanic eruptions of the 20th century. Situated on the island of Luzon, the volcano is part of a volcanic chain along the western tip of the island. The prediction of the impending …
In the morning hours of July 16, 1945, in the remote desert two hundred miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, the first ever nuclear weapon was detonated as part of the US nuclear research program, code named The Manhattan-Project. This event marked the dawn of a new geological age, born out of atomic tests, …
