Space Junk 3D Page #4

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It could collide with the

first one; their paths do cross.

An astronaut was asked this question:

When you're in orbit and see these

things in space, does that worry you?

His answer was:
I worry

more about what I don't see.

Our belief that what goes up

must come down isn't always true.

It's estimated that LEO contains

6000 tonnes of space junk,

and GEO is home to 400 dead satellites,

parked into a higher graveyard orbit,

where they will remain

for hundreds of years.

That's a whole lot of junk.

So what exactly is out there?

Over the last 50 years, we've launched

several thousand objects into space.

Yet there are only around 1000 spacecraft

that are operational at this time.

What may surprise many people is that

once an object stops

functioning, we leave it in orbit.

Every single one of these non-operational

spacecraft is a potential source of debris.

In fact, most spacecraft that

are launched into the orbit

actually leave a trail

of debris in the process.

Upper-stage rocket bodies

weighing several tonnes

make up a good portion of junk in space.

...as do mission-related objects

like cast-off bolts, or o-rings...

The rest, of miscellaneous fragments,

exploded rockets, left-over fuel...

And the list goes on...

But even with this

incredible amount of debris,

few people were taking the

notion of space junk seriously

until the morning of February 10, 2009.

Earlier that day, a report

was issued predicting that

Iridium 33 would encounter a

close approach of just 1900 feet

with another spacecraft.

It's Cosmos 2251, travelling

at the same speed as Iridium.

Amazingly, this collision

alert wasn't even among the top

predicted for any of the Iridium

satellites for the coming week.

But at 4:
56 PM, the time predicted for

the close approach, Iridium 33 went silent.

Two satellites that had simultaneously

circled the planet for a dozen years

had collided.

Cosmos, as it turned

out, was a dead satellite,

ceasing to function in 1995, just

two years after it was launched.

Now more than a 100,000 pieces from

this collision cloud Low-Earth Orbit.

The Iridium-Cosmos collision

was very much a game changer.

There were those who thought of

space in terms of a Big Sky Theory,

that it was limitless and we didn't

need to worry about ever crowding it.

It became very obvious that that wasn't

true and people began to consider:

What do we need to do to keep

this from happening again?

Far from space, deep in the desert

near White Sands, New Mexico,

sits the remote

hyper-velocity test laboratory,

where engineers are providing

solutions required to advance

space travel in the face of

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