"The Space Junkyard"
By Jose Reyes
Estimations show that there are 9,000 man-made objects floating about in space. From this figure there are about 2,800 that are working and non-working satellites orbiting earth. 90 are space probes and the rest are just chunks of all types of metals. Now remember, these are just objects of the size of a baseball and larger. If you count all the nuts, the bolts and tiny debris, then you will reach a total of approximately 150,000 items orbiting earth with an approximate weight of 4 million pounds. Some of these objects reach the speed of 17,500 miles an hour, that's faster than a speeding bullet. For that reason U.S. Space Command was formed and is located in Colorado. U.S. Space Command's sole purpose is too track orbiting debris larger than 4 centimeters wide, orbiting up to 600 miles up. When the shuttle or any other spacecrafts are orbiting earth, Space Command is there to alert and direct these multi-million dollar, light-armored projectiles, away from harm's way.
Saturn V Rocket (J002E3)
There are loads of interesting historical artifacts floating around in space
orbit. One was discovered on September 3rd of 2002, by a curious astronomer in
an observatory located in Arizona. After searching through all the historical
data recorded since the early 60's, they came to the conclusion that this object
was from the Apollo 12 Mission, which was launched on November 14,
1969. J002E3 is a third stage rocket used in on a moon mission. It was in
earth orbit until 1970 when the sun's orbit swept it away. It stayed in the
Sun's orbit for approximately 33 years until April of 2002 when it passed
through Earth's L1's Lagrange Point, A
Region in Space where the Earth's gravity cancels out with the
Sun's gravity. (Click
Here For More Information On The 5 Lagrange Points)
J002E3
is the first example of
the Earth capturing an object from the Sun's orbit, even though Jupiter has been
guilty of stealing meteors from the Sun in the past. From analyzing its orbit,
astronomers are predicting the burned out Saturn V rocket will be smashing
into the moon sometime soon or will be burning up in the Earth's atmosphere in
the next 10 years.
The oldest Spacecraft that still is in orbit and was the second satellite launch by the US is the Vanguard 1, launched in 1958. It worked only for 6 years.
The most debris created was by the upper stage of the Pegasus 5 spacecraft, which exploded in 1996 and formed a cloud of 300,000 fragments, doubling the threat of collision with the orbiting Hubble Telescope. The Airplane-launched Pegasus 5 was initially launched in 1994.
The Hubble Telescope and the International Space Station are also floating around in Space and they must be constantly monitored, 24 hours a day. These very expensive, but also very important spacecrafts should be of our concern, since our hard-earned taxes from our paychecks brought them to existence. I'm not protesting about this because these are long term projects that have been developed so that everyone in the world could have a better understanding of the universe and also benefit from its medicinal discoveries. The shuttle system has to be cut off completely, unless the mission has something to do with supplying the International Space Station with Astronauts or necessary equipment.
CONCLUSION:
At the present time there is no danger to the Earthlings for two reasons. First the "Space Basura" burns out before entering the Earth's atmosphere. Second, since the Earth consist of 70% Water, the chances of the non-burned, remaining debris, to hit humans are very small. It's just the accumulation of spacecrafts that provides the increase of collision. It's the famous saying "What goes up must come down", that comes into play when the amount of satellites and space probes launched, almost double every year. Within 20 years, if this continues, the spacecrafts will be met with a metal wall that will stop them cold and then we wouldn't be able to adventure into space anymore, what a shame!
