STARRY EYED

There is always something in the news about the build up of rubbish on our ever-cluttered planet. This week you can cast your gaze upwards and look to the stars. Yes, the earth isn’t the only thing that is being clogged up with waste. The orbital debris that has been building up in space from shuttle rocket stages and old satellites is causing a cloud of fragments that are threatening the future of space travel. These small fragments are traveling at between 3-6km per second and a piece the size of a flake of paint would cause an impression the size of a golf ball in any craft unfortunate enough to run into them. There are about 70,000 objects 2cm in size just 1 km above our heads. Don’t be too alarmed though because the chances of one of them hitting you when you are out for a walk are around 1 in a trillion. To put you more at ease this compares with 1.4 million to one being hit by lightening. There was an instance near Buenos Aires where the inhabitants witnessed “incandescent meteors” one night. They woke up to find the streets were scattered with metal fragments from old satellites. Higher up at a level called geosynchronous altitude (this is 36,000 km above the earth where an object turns in orbit with the earth to make it look as though it is standing still) is where most satellites operate. Satellites usually have enough fuel in them so the operators on earth can send them into an orbital graveyard (300 km above geosynchronous) when their usefulness has come to an end. This is a cheaper and less hazardous method of disposal that trying to get the structure back to earth. The technology for sending these satellites into the graveyard is a bit hit and miss as only 6 out of 15 have managed to get there over the last year. It’s a bit of a short term fix up in space as the rubbish will have to be dealt with later as more things are sent up there. There will be earthlings moving into the new $100 billion International Space Station on November 2nd, lets hope they take a few dustbin liner bags and clean up after themselves

Environmental.