COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Dealing with the decades of detritus from using outer space — human-made orbital debris — is a global concern, but some experts are now questioning the feasibility of the wide range of “solutions” sketched out to grapple with high-speed space litter.
What may be shaping up is an “abandon in place” posture for certain orbital altitudes — an outlook that flags the messy message resulting from countless bits of orbital refuse.
“The traffic is increasing. We’ve now got over 50 nations that are participants in the space environment,” Shelton said last month during the Space Foundation’s 27th National Space Symposium. Given existing space situational awareness capabilities, over 20,000 objects are now tracked.
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this could mean a high demand for litter-proof umbrellas O_O
I once read we are decened from space poo…. the astranaughts flush into outspace, hits an asteroid and gets carried off to far glaxies…. not just the satalite up there!!
What must be remembered when looking at this imagine, is that the size of each dot on the image which represents a piece of space debris, is not relative to the size of the earth. They are overly exaggerated to highlight the problem. Which is non the less, a serious one.
does that include gene roddenberry’s ashes? :0
I once saw a documentary where this guy wearing a red cape collected all the nuclear missiles in the world, and took them into space, where he put them into a giant metal net and hurled them into the sun.
Was thinking we could see if we could hire him to do the same with space junk?
simple solution, send up two satelites with a giant fishing net attached between the two. Scoop up all the rubbish then send it deep into space where the satelites will then explode in a huge explosion destroying every peice of rubbish.
Recently i read,open-mouthed,about nuclear satellites.
Incredible pieces of kit.
Unfortunately there are thousands of them-mini nuclear catastrophes-floating overhead,waiting to re-enter.Where they hit is one of lifes free to enter lotteries.
@ Andy – I saw the same documentary and in another one, about the same astronaut, he spun the earth backwards fast enough to mysteriously reverse time. Maybe we could hire him to collect the trash before it even gets there.
On another note, I heard that we’d ought to leave as much debris there as possible in order to block the sun’s deadly rays and reduce global warming. (This of course begs the question of where the heat already in the atmosphere is supposed to go but hey as long as no extra gets in we’ll be ok right?)
Don’t some or all of them eventually burn up in the atmosphere in time?