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space junk

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space junk

Biggest garbage dump: Oceans or Space?

People are good at spreading trash around the globe, and even our vast oceans are starting to fill up with (mostly plastic) refuse. Witness the North Pacific subtropical gyre, a floating trashcan the size of Texas. But outer space is closing the gap, according to a recent article in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (thanks, TreeHugger). We've heard a lot about the threat space debris poses to expensive communications satellites (read: Pentagon is getting worried about damaging their pretty spy sats), but what about crewed flights? Tourists' flights into low Earth orbit are going to be bumpy rides if we don't get to fixing his problem soon.

1:40 PM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By Michael Reilly
1,519 views, 25 comments

Latest by RAHfanboy: Let what's up there fall down, make as little new debris as economically possible, and track what's left. Voila. The down side to this solution is that it avoids environmentalist-type hysteria and all the fun talk of celestial garbage scows more »

Watch Out for Spy Satellite Debris Raining from the Sky A bus-sized spy satellite, made by and for the U.S., has lost power and will crash down on Earth as early as February. Apparently, nobody knows if the satellite has been dead for a year or just a few days. (Great going, intelligence geeks.) The best part? According to AP, the only comment the National Security Council would make came from a flak who said, "Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation." Most experts agree the debris from the satellite will be minimal — far less than the space shuttle crash, and certainly less than what smashed into the Indian Ocean when the 78-ton abandoned space station Skylab smash-landed in 1979. (Thanks, Morgan!) [AP]

11 comments

extraterrestrial garbage

Suicidal Russian Space Junk Plunges Into Earth's Atmosphere

Sturdy, car-sized space freighter Progress 26 was launched off the International Space Station on Saturday, filled to the brim with trash — basically, all the crap (literally and figuratively) the crew had been accumulating for weeks. Progress 27, another uncrewed freighter, will be arriving with fresh food and supplies from Earth for the ISS cosmonauts. No word on what will happen to the poop-packed Progress 26 once it's been launched from the ISS, but probably it will meet the same fate as its predecessor Progress 23 last March, which was programmed to burn itself up in our atmosphere. Russian Trash Ship [Space.com]

7:30 AM on Mon Dec 24 2007
By Annalee Newitz
132 views, Comment