Trash-Talking Earths Space
For fifty years we've been polluting more than our land, rivers, oceans and, depending on whom you ask, minds. The space around the Earth is being poluted to a degree of urgency, and for good reason. There are no laws for this, only recommendations to reduce and minimize the amount being left there every few days.
A small particle of space junk 1/10th of a millimeter in size caused a ding in a space shuttle of 1 full millimeter. The International Space Station was recently freaked out by a 5-inch piece of debris that buzzed by them.
Wanna see it real-time? For real? You can! Thanks to technologies that enable us to have things like Google Earth to view our own planet with, you can use your home PC and the internet to track Space Junk yourself. You'll need to access data from the U.S. Strategic Command website. (See the Link below)
“Even something as small as a paint chip moving at 17,000 miles per hour can be a big problem,” says orbital debris analyst Roger Thompson of The Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif. Solutions seem varied and the world seeks an answer. There seems to be no real, practical solution for the Earths Space Junk problem. And debris is falling from orbit and landing on our planet on a daily basis.
One collision causes more debris scattered in a wider area. A satellite knocked from it's orbital path may hit another satellite, causing damage and communications loss. Anything of any size is detrimental when it comes into the orbital path of something else. Something not even the size of your PC Mouse could threaten the lives of those aboard the International Space Station. This is serious! Heck, an American and a Russian satellite collided in 2009.
Okay, so Russians had wasteful rockets, too, that left behind stages and contributed quite a bit to the Space Junk problem in the early space age. We can't do anything about that, though, so let's look at the present and the future. Maybe, just maybe, you'll come up with the right solution and be known as the person who cleaned up space.
- Lasers to reduce space junk.
- An orbital "Net" to colect debris.
- A Magnet to collect metallic debris.
- ____Your Idea Here________
Sources:
Big as a Bus, Hurtling towards USA:
Space Junk New Article:
http://news.yahoo.com/space-junk-littering-orbit-might-cleaning-173155267.html
Space Junk Map:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/map-space-junk
Tracking Space Junk:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/howtojunk/
Seeking Solutions for Space Junk Problem:
http://solariasun.com/6076/space-junk-problem-solution/
http://gizmodo.com/5829325/new-technique-could-rid-space-of-junk-in-just-4000-years
Last Updated (Saturday, 24 September 2011 20:01)