 | I’ve been picking at a short story involving space trash (our upper atmosphere is cluttered with debris). In 2023 three astronauts were stranded for over a year after their capsule radiator was struck by a minuscule piece of space junk, similar to the 2007 Endeavor mission damage. A company called Privateer is creating 3D images of the junk cluttering Earth’s atmosphere. Omega (of spacewatch fame) is a recent partner and issued a cool video showing these 3D images. |
Per Wikipedia: “As of November 2022, the US Space Surveillance Network reported 25,857 artificial objects in orbit above the Earth, including 5,465 operational satellites. However, these are just the objects large enough to be tracked and in an orbit that makes tracking possible.”
 | Says author Iris Gottlieb, "From the tiniest flecks of paint to large defunct satellites, our orbital litter is beginning to pose real problems for the health of space and Earth as it becomes a rotation landfill above us. . . . Even the smallest pieces can have damaging effects at speeds of 15,700 mph. The impact of these objects can cause items to fall back to Earth or break satellites, which in turn become more defunct space junk. |
NASA has an orbital debris tracking program. They estimate there are half a million marble-sized objects and one-hundred-million flecks smaller than one millimeter.
The speck that incapacitated the Soyuz capsule radiator and stranded those three astronauts was 0.08 millimeters--about the diameter of a human hair. It was able to pierce the spaceship because of the incredibly fast speed at which this debris travels in orbit around the planet.
The speck that incapacitated the Soyuz capsule radiator and stranded those three astronauts was 0.08 millimeters--about the diameter of a human hair. It was able to pierce the spaceship because of the incredibly fast speed at which this debris travels in orbit around the planet.
 | I don’t want to live in a garbage dump. I pick up trash while hiking to keep it out of the water supply and as a favor to the forest and fellow hikers. Once a week, I take our garbage barrel and recycling out to the curb. Every day I pick up scattered cat toys. Here’s hoping the satellite and space exploration industries learn how to clean up after themselves, before it becomes a more lethal problem. |
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