In the first reported orbital collision ever, a US and a Russian communications satellite have accidentally collided 780km above Siberia. A "massive cloud of debris" has been produced, and NASA is tracking the hundreds of bits resulting from the crash, in the hope that they won't interfere with the ISS and the shuttle, which is due to launch later this month.

It's comprehensively answered the question of "how much stuff can we stick up there without it hitting each other?", as 6,000 satellites have been sent into orbit since the first in 1957. Only about half are still in use, with the others having become defunct over the years.

The satellites in question belong to Communications firm Iridium, based in Bethesda, Maryland, and Russia's civilian space agency, Roscosmos. The former was launched in 1997 and only weighed 560kg, so probably came off rather worse in the collision than its one-tonne Russian rival from 1993.

Place your bets in the comments below as to when the second collision will occur. The closest wins a bit of charred satellite, dug out of the tundra of Siberia.

(via BBC)

A gentleman who used to work for the Ministry of Defence has said that the RAF has been trying, unsuccessfully, to shoot down UFOs for years.

Nick Pope, who worked on the MoD's UFO desk for three years, told the Sun:

"We know of cases where the order has been given to shoot down - with little effect to the UFO."

According to Pope, pilots only open fire if they consider the UFO to be a threat to UK airspace which is probably about every time they show up at all. I can't imagine most pilots not thinking there's much of a threat when faced with an enemy both uncommunicative and with technology way in advance ourselves.

Watching the inauguration yesterday from the ground, it was almost impossible to get a proper sense of scale of the proceedings. It was clear it was massive, but how massive? Well, click the image above to get a bird's eye view of the scene in Washington from 681km up in the atmosphere.

You see those brown blobs? Those are massive crowds of people. Millions, in fact. The image is courtesy of Google's (well, it's not really theirs) GeoEye-1 satellite. More awesome satellite images of the inauguration over the break.

Patrick McGoohan, made famous by his role in bewildering 60s sci-fi escapology show The Prisoner, died on Tuesday, aged 80.

He was great in Danger Man, made his name in The Prisoner, then continued to deliver entertainment beyond the call of duty by directing and starring in numerous episodes of Columbo between the 1970s and his last directorial appearance in 2000.

Every Saturday we scan the satellite TV listings hoping a McGoohan-based episode of the shambling cop show will be on. And you can never go wrong watching him in Scanners. It is terribly sad news. He really didn't make enough films and TV shows considering his mesmerising acting skills.

Turns out we have a lot more in common with our Klingon friends than we first thought.

Klingons like a nice big Enter key on the right to make typing easier, just like us. They also enjoy a big Space bar, plus it looks like they have evolved a similar aesthetic of placing the 'Esc' key at the top-left and sticking a range of Function keys that go from about F1 to F12 along the top for easy access to features.

Klingons also like to use a separate numeric keypad for fast-entry of numerical data, ideal for the 'Worker Klingons' who do all the tedious admin work back on the homeworld.

It's so similar to our human keyboards, in fact, we're starting to suspect it's just a rebadged Cherry eVolution Stream Wired Multimedia QWERTY keyboard with a few novelty klingon symbols whacked on the top and an extra £25 stuck on the price.

(Via BB)

Related posts: Star Trek Command Chair OUT NOW! | How To Spot A Cylon

Demand a toilet AND underpants in one handy device? The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has got it covered!

The clichéd slightly wacky Japanese scientists have built the amazing below gadget, which could eliminate toilet trips for good. Poo and wee are sucked out by a pump, with a built-in washer/dryer system cleaning up the resulting mess, leaving you relaxed, fresh and dry. It's genius. Especially if the suction pump also comes with optional 'entertainment' attachments.

Might not be the most comfortable thing to wear about the place, but it'll definitely find itself a niche among Warcraft players, where abandoning your guild members to take a toilet break is a sign of weakness and dishonour.

(Via Akihabara)

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A 16 year study that involved staring at the stars for ages and everyone getting very, very cold, has discovered that there's pretty much definitely a massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Minor fluctuations spotted in the movements of stars have, apparently, signalled to people who understand this sort of stuff, that an object with four million times the mass of our Sun must be sitting there exerting its gravitational pull over all nearby stars.

We now have "the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist" according to project leader Professor Reinhard Genzel, from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

So that's why the sky is black at night. Seems so obvious now with the benefit of hindsight.

(Via PA)

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