July 17, 2007
Taking Out the Trash in Space
Gina Sunseri at ABC News:
The numbers are staggering: 13,000 pieces of junk, each of them more than 30 feet long, are orbiting in space.
There are at least another 100,000 hunks of junk that measure between 1 and 10 centimeters (roughly one-half to 4 inches). And the number of pieces smaller than 1 centimeter orbiting the Earth is in the millions.
It's a mess up there.
Why does NASA care so much about all the space junk? Because it only takes one tiny object, flying at thousands of miles an hour, to punch a catastrophic hole in the International Space Station or a space shuttle.
When astronauts need to throw something away on the space station, they don't want to add to the problem. They can wait for a Russian Progress supply ship to take it away, or return it to Earth on a shuttle flight.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 09:17 PM | Permalink
Comments
There's no WAY that "13,000 pieces of junk, each of them more than 30 feet long" is correct.
I'd bet a great deal that's actually the figure for all items >10cm... most of which are a great deal less than 30 feet long.
Posted by: Monte Davis | Jul 29, 2007 2:39:43 PM
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