The Great Space Tether

When Science Meets Pasta: NASA's 20 km Space Tether Fiasco

NASA once tried to power a satellite with a 20-kilometer-long wire, which is basically the biggest space spaghetti ever cooked. The plan? Use Earth’s magnetic field to generate electricity. The result? A giant floating Space Noodle that snapped after just 19.7 km, lit up the sky, and re-entered the atmosphere in a blaze of pasta glory. On the bright side, it did make enough power to run three toasters at once. Humanity may not have conquered the…

The Great Space Tether

In the 1990s, NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) teamed up to conduct an unusual series of experiments. The Tethered Satellite System (TSS) planned