Space Junks

What dangers can these Junks cause?

The "energy flash" of a hypervelocity impact during a simulation of what happens when a piece of orbital debris hits a spacecraft in orbit

Although it's hard to believe, many of these objects travel around the Earth at speeds more than 22,000 miles an hour. Anything traveling at a velocity this high would cause a considerable amount of damage to a spacecraft if a direct hit occurred. Even a tiny fleck of paint traveling at such a speed is capable of boring a quarter-inch hole into the window of a space station.

The U.S. Space Surveillance Network, a department that tracks debris floating through space and reports to NASA, observes over 13,000 man-made objects orbiting Earth larger than 4 inches in diameter [source: National Geographic News]. That number has only been increasing, up from 9,000 objects in 2000. The organization estimates there are also millions of much smaller objects floating around, and all of it combined weighs about 5,500 tons. Does all this space junk create any problems for space stations -- or even people on the ground?

This junk can be very dangerous so dangerous that a tiny fleck of paint almost broke a winshield of a shuttle orbiting our world

Because there are so many objects flying around up there, there's concern that collisions between debris will only produce more fragments. Even if we stopped launching spacecraft right now and didn't send a single object into orbit, the amount of debris in space would remain constant until 2055 [source: National Geographic News]. After that, things would actually get worse, because the amount of material already up there would inevitably collide and create even more space junk. Experts are worried this is already happening. The most recent case of such a collision, for instance, happened on Jan. 17, 2005, when a piece of debris from an exploded Chinese rocket smashed into a 31-year-old American rocket that had been left alone. The collision only produced four pieces of debris, but observers fear it's only a matter of time before such pieces create an unstoppable chain reaction.

Why wouldn't they clear the junk?

The technology for this is not invented yet. But it might be invented in the near future

"EDDE will 'sail' on the Earth's magnetic field like a sailing ship in the wind, giving it unlimited range, using solar power. This is the breakthrough technology that makes possible the removal of all large, dangerous debris objects in low Earth orbit. We are working to develop the components that make EDDE possible," STAR spokesperson Jerome Pearson said.

According to the design, EDDE would "sail" to an extinct satellite, using a solar-powered six-mile long space tether line. It will then eject a large net to catch the targeted satellite, and lower itself into a lower orbit. It will fire out the caught satellite into the Earth's atmosphere, where it would then burn up. Once EDDE ejects the satellite, it will "sail" back up into higher orbit and proceed to catch another non-operating satellite, Pearson explained

What is Space Junk?

Space junk consists of many objects from tools droped by astrounats and satelitte parts

Space Junk,also knowned as Space debris, also known as orbital debris, and space waste, is the collection of objects in orbit around Earth that were created by humans but no longer serve any useful purpose. These objects consist of everything from spent rocket stages and defunct satellites to erosion, explosion and collision fragments. As the orbits of these objects often overlap the trajectories of newer objects, debris is a potential collision risk to operational spacecraft