Falling space debris

by Jessica Woods

Pic: Courtesy eric-group.co.uk

Space debris is a collection of defunct man-made objects in orbit around Earth – old satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments from disintegration, erosion and collisions. Debris can also affect spacecraft launches.

According to NASA releases, 21,000 pieces of space debris measure more than 3.9 inches. The orbiting speed of these objects signifies that each of the almost 20,000 items in this size class can do a slight damage. The 60 second video can be viewed above, or the full visualization telling the full history of space junk can be viewed here.

Since we have been technologically capable, we have been littering our cosmic backyard with nearly every mission into space that has created new debris, either from the launch vehicles, objects falling off satellites or unintended collisions.

The Kessler effect claims that there will be a time when the densities of space debris are so high that they’ll begin causing collisions –creating even more space debris. It also tracks objects the size of a marble (but smaller than a softball) and has counted about 500,000 such things in space.

Although the initial years looked fast, in the year 2007, explosion of a Chinese ballistic missile tests took place, which added 2,000 more pieces to the space.

Two years later, two satellites collided, creating another 2000 pieces of space junk. Grey used data from Space-Track.org, a group that monitors space debris, to build his model.

Scientists are working on ways to clear up space junk to avoid the huge risk it poses to other spacecraft and satellites, such as a hole in the solar array of the ISS in 2013.

Proposals such as blasting the debris out of orbit with some type of a laser device, to an outer-space trash truck, with a robotic arm that would collect the junk as it passes by for later disposal, have been under consideration.

Recently, one such man made space chunk dubbed as “WTF” headed towards Earth, but got burnt due to atmospheric friction before hitting the Earth’s surface near Sri Lanka in Indian Ocean.

The objects in the visualization aren’t to scale, but are all larger than an apple, “that is, an apple capable of ripping through a steel wall at 17,000 miles per hour,” Bohannon writes.

Mercurynewsdaily.com