There may be at least half a million pieces of man-made junk orbiting this planet. Tiny pieces can travel around 10 kilometers per second, far faster than a bullet. The International Space Station has had to adjust its orbit just to avoid the stuff. People are rightfully concerned about what to do with all this…
An experimental Japanese mission to remove dangerous debris from orbit has ended in failure. It’s a frustrating setback given the mounting risks posed by the nearly two million bits of junk currently swirling around our planet.
You would never buy a hundred million-dollar computer without a repair plan, but that’s exactly what NASA does when it sends costly satellites into space. To ensure that its prized eyes-in-the-sky don’t become the solar system’s most expensive e-waste, the space agency is now building a robot capable of repairing and…
Around 9:30pm last night, residents of Northern California began reporting bright lights in the sky that could be seen as far away as Las Vegas. So far no one has any idea what they were.
You think the trash problem in your city is bad? Try outer space. We humans have been littering our cosmic backyard with spent satellites, rocket hulls, and other discarded debris fragments for as long as we’ve had the technological know-how.
Satellites are built to endure decades in the most inhospitable conditions in the known universe. Paradoxically, engineers are now trying to figure out how to design them so that they do melt—planned obsolescence at 200 miles above the Earth.
Humans clearly have a trash problem on Earth, but our track record isn’t that much better in outer space, where tens of thousands of stray debris fragments whip around the planet at rip-roaring speeds, posing a very serious danger to astronauts and satellites.
I wasn’t worried. Were you worried?
Earlier this week, the internet worked itself into a frenzy over the “mysterious chunk of space trash” — actually a spent rocket fragment — that’s making an ominous but not-at-all dangerous homecoming on a Friday the 13th in November. Wonder what that terrifying cosmic garbage will look like before it burns up in…
You may be surprised to learn that a “mysterious object dubbed ‘WT1190F’” is headed directly for Earth. THIS IS TRUE. But scientists now have a pretty good idea what it is—and think it will probably burn up before it reaches the planet. ‘WT...F’ is coming??!?!?!
A rogue chunk of debris that orbited Earth far beyond the Moon is making a homecoming on November 13th, astronomers have concluded. WT1190F is one to two meters in length and probably hollow, but beyond that, we have no idea WTF the aptly-named piece of space garbage is.
January 1, 1963: This is what happens when a piece of space junk hits a spacecraft in orbit. While gorgeous, the energy flash of a hypervelocity impact packs a serious punch.
About two hours ago—at about 8AM EST this morning—a piece of an old Russian-built weather satellite sped by the International Space Station, dangerously close to the station. It’s the fourth time that astronauts aboard the ISS have “sheltered” because of space junk.
Fellow space nerds, I come bringing sweet internet relief for the Monday doldrums. It’s stuffin.space, a real-time, 3D-visualized map of all objects looping around Earth, from satellites to orbital trash.
In space, all it takes is a tiny grain of junk travelling at high speeds to create a very, very bad day.
Millions of pieces of space junk, big and small, are constantly circling the Earth. This intractable problem has inspired many a grandiose idea, but perhaps none as initially bizarre-sounding as a laser on the International Space Station, a real scheme recently proposed by Japanese scientists.
How will we clean up the giant (and steadily increasing) trash vortex that swirls around our little blue planet? Perhaps by harpooning it with these space fishing nets.
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite number 13 (DMSP-13) exploded in orbit in February, spewing 43 more pieces of garbage into low Earth orbit. The more aggravating part? This isn't the first satellite of the model to explode.
