In December 1995, the Galileo probe made its dramatic descent into Jupiter’s atmosphere at a velocity of more than 47 km/s. In 30 seconds, it decelerated from Mach 50 to Mach 1, Keep reading
Tag: hypersonic
Exploding Meteors
During the recent Perseid shower, photographer Petr Horálek caught an awesome timelapse of an exploding meteor and the vortex ring it created. This is a type of persistent train left when meteors Keep reading
Break-Up of the Chelyabinsk Meteor
In 2013, a meteor about 20-meters in diameter broke up over Chelyabinsk, Russia in a dramatic display that damaged buildings within 100 km and injured more than 1200 people. To Keep reading
HIFiRE
Earlier this month, an international team launched a successful hypersonic flight test in Australia. The Hypersonic International Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) Flight 5b was launched atop a two-stage rocket and reached Keep reading
Re-Entry
Atmospheric re-entry subjects vehicles to extreme conditions. At high Mach numbers, the leading shock wave compresses the air so strongly that it reaches temperatures hotter than the surface of the Keep reading
Asteroid Impact
I often receive questions about how fluids react to extremely hard and fast impacts. Some people wonder if there’s a regime where a fluid like water will react like a Keep reading
The Chelyabinsk Meteor
In February 2013 a meteor streaked across the Russian sky and burst in midair near Chelyabinsk. A recent Physics Today article summarizes what scientists have pieced together about the meteor, Keep reading