Gadgetory

when you think of space you think of just that space emptiness the void but when it comes to the space around Earth it's actually not that empty it's filled with a whole bunch of junk or space trash in fact experts think that there are millions of pieces of debris in orbit ranging in size from bigger than a softball to smaller than a marble so what is all of this junk hanging out around our planet well the awkward part it's all our stuff that we've put into space that we just don't use anymore sorry mom that can be satellites that are no longer working leftovers from rockets or stuff that's come off spacecraft over time like panels or even flecks of paint space debris has included some rather unique items too there's a tool bag still up there that was lost by an astronaut during the spacewalk a lipstick size capsule of Gene Roddenberry's ashes once over to the globe for a while - even frozen pee used to make the rounds before pee recycling systems were put in place astronauts used to dump their urine out into space where it immediately turned into beautiful shiny ice crystals that reflected the Sun sure that's lovely and all but just like trash here on earth debris and space can be a big problem it makes the space around our planet congested and potentially dangerous place you may think space debris is just floating out there all slow-like but this stuff isn't really floating at all it's actually zooming around earth at more than 17,000 miles per hour that wouldn't be a big issue if everything was moving in the same direction but there are a bunch of different types of orbits that space trash can be on some go around earth's equator while others go around the poles for instance that's where you run the risk of getting t-boned it happened in 2009 when a u.s. satellite collided with one from Russia putting thousands of pieces of debris into space a similar event occurred in 2007 when China destroyed one of its satellites with a missile creating a whole mess of trash okay so different scenario but the same result even the smallest piece of trash traveling at such a high speed could cause a whole lot of damage if it crashes into something if collisions happen too often then we run the risk of something called the Kessler syndrome it's a simple concept colliding space objects create even more space objects and the more debris there is higher odds of more collisions so if we don't keep these accidents in check it's all going to snowball until we get so much litter in space that the entire area is basically going to be hostile to spacecraft for generations our best defense against collisions is to basically know where all of this space trash is right now tracking space debris is the job of the Defense Department it uses something called the Space Surveillance Network an array of telescopes entirely dedicated to tracking objects in space and figuring out what they are the network is capable of tracking anything that's bigger than 10 centimeters so about the size of a baseball and right now more than 22,000 objects of this size are being tracked once an object is spotted by the network trackers must determine its orbit and then see if it's in the catalog it's getting the catalog trackers have to be able to identify a piece of debris all the way back to its launch if you can't it's called an uncorrelated tract or basically we don't know what it is but ultimately the main goal is to know the odds of these pieces running into each other the satellite has a 1% probability of collision that's way too high and you're going to want to perform some orbit correction maneuvers with your thrusters to avoid an accident even a space station has to move out of the way sometimes when debris is in the area of course correction maneuvers are really only an option for spacecraft with fuel to spare nothing can be done for debris without thrusters plus there's a whole ton of small objects that the surveillance network can't see for those experts have to create theoretical models to predict where these tiny pieces are going to be so how do we clean up this mess well for the satellites in lower Earth orbit chances are they will come down eventually there are still air molecules in the upper atmosphere that create drag on spacecraft pulling them back down to our planet those vehicles will mostly burn up on the way back to earth but just in case the US is a policy that satellites must have a plan to do your bit safely when the time comes that means no satellites are going to fall on your head that only works for satellites in lower Earth orbit though many of our communication satellites are in a much higher region 22,000 miles above Earth called geostationary orbit those are way too high to come back down so when they run their course we put them into a graveyard orbit it's an orbit that's 200 miles up the hope is that they'll be far enough away to not interfere with our operating satellites and those satellites will basically stay up there forever as for getting rid of the rest of the stuff people have come up with some creative and little kooky ideas there's a concept known as The Terminator tether it's a miles long cable that interacts with Earth's magnetic field inducing a current along the tether this creates drag on spacecraft in orbit causing them to fall back down to earth it's similar to an electric whip that Japan recently sent to space for clearing out debris other ideas include adding balloons or sails to spacecraft to slow them down when they're done or even shooting them with lasers the photons would impart a small thrust on the object enough to bring it down there are a lot of other ideas too but there isn't anything really viable to solve this problem right now so in the meantime the best option is to get better at tracking all this stuff and that job may soon switch hands the Federal Aviation Administration has been very vocal about wanting to take over the job of debris tracking from the Defense Department so soon the FAA may be the traffic cops of air and space there's also another way to protect against small debris that's moving pretty slow it's called the whiffle shield and it acts as like a bumper shock for things moving at 1 to 11 miles per second and the space station has over 100 whipple shields on it so it's good to go