Space Junk

Science News (a great website full of fascinating articles) ran a story at the weekend that really caught my eye. It was actually in the "For Kids" section but then many have said that I'm a big kid anyway. It was concerning the fact that NASA has to track millions of pieces of junk that are orbiting earth. This debris could have catastrophic effects on a future shuttle mission or worse still if even the smallest pieces fell to earth.


Each white dot in this picture apparently represents an individual piece of tracked orbital debris. This image shows the Low Earth Orbit, which is the region from the Earth’s surface to 1,240 miles and contains the most space junk.

According to the article...

There are some unusual things up there, like a camera that floated away from astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams in December 2006. Other astronauts have lost tools like wrenches and screwdrivers. In 1965 astronaut Ed White even lost a spare glove. Most of the junk, however, comes from large satellites and rockets that fell apart after they stopped working.

I always think of space as the last part of our world that us humans haven't managed to pollute. I guess I was wrong, we've made a huge start apparently. The original article can be found here and is well worth a read for the mind-boggling statistics alone.