Thousands of pieces of debris are orbiting the Earth, travelling at over 27,000 km/h.1 This space junk can collide with and destroy essential satellites, knocking out communications – and in turn creating even more junk. As the layer of junk gets thicker, it’s becoming more dangerous to launch satellites and send astronauts into space. Our lifestyle depends on satellites in orbit, but space junk poses a real danger.
Space junk includes old dead satellites, fuel tanks, everyday rubbish from past space stations, lost tools from spacewalks, and even astronauts’ gloves, along with natural debris from space. Junk can range in size from dust to very tiny fragments (called ‘bullets’) to full-size satellites (‘cars’).
Low Earth orbit is 500 km above the Earth’s surface. This is where most of the junk is, and is also the region where we have had most manned spacecraft and many scientific satellites.
Middle Earth orbit is about 2000 km above the Earth’s surface. This is where you find the GPS system of satellites, orbiting twice a day.
Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km above Earth. Satellites here stay above a fixed point on the Earth and are usually for communications, television signals and monitoring the weather. They orbit once a day.
That’s a lot of junk Cherie… it’s starting to look like the plastic bags and bottle islands that are found in the Pacific Ocean…
on Earth… nothing really goes away… except the space junk
….peter:)
The junk we make always remains, it just gets dumped somewhere…
Seen the film Gravity? The rubbish storms are terrifying.
I have not seen the film, is it worth watching?
Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? It’s far too long since I visited the Science Museum and you’ve reminded me what a diverse place it is. Thanks for your kind words on A Bit About Britain – we certainly share an interest in heritage and interesting sites and I look forward to future mutual comments. BTW – interesting to hear about the war gaming. I haven’t quite worked out how a Blogger blog follows a Wordpress blog, but no doubt I’ll get there eventually!
The Natural History Museum is coming up next
I don’t know how about the following feature. I keep track of all my blogs via ‘The Old Reader’.
http://theoldreader.com/
Scary stuff. One day no doubt there will be orbiting refuse trucks!
One day our space junk will destroy us!!
Litter? In space?
Why so surprised, that is only to be expected. It has always been the ‘mindset’ of industry since the beginning of the industrial revolution: do your business, make stuff, sell it, move on to the next ‘new toy’ and leave your mess behind.
London-
http://www.derelictlondon.com/waterways-and-wharves.html
Detroit-
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/abandoned-detroit-photos#1
….and worst of all is this one-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2195590/3-000-ton-timebomb-shipwrecked-Thames-estuary.html
Sorry but I hate litter louts!
p.s.
That worst of all I mentioned is for the future, the worst one in the past was Aberfan.
Man has created a legacy of junk that is not biodegradable. The Junk is with us forever competing with our natural habitat!
Isn’t it sad that we litter on earth and now around earth in space
It is sad, we should all be nurturing the earth upon which we rely.
They need a 2000W ’space hoover’ and quick!
The EU are going to ban Hoovers over 1600W from next month.
Hope you are well? Very busy here with lots of ‘Organ outings’. I’m beginning to feel my age – and unfortunately – it’s not 21.
It is nice to hear from you
A ’space hoover’ that would be a great engineering project. I wonder if we can find someone to fund it…
I think we need to find a way to ban the EU silly nonsense laws!!!
I am well thankyou, but like you busy.
It sound like you have been having fun over the summer with your ‘Organ outings’