It’s not just here on earth that litter is a problem. In the last 40 years, there have been more than 5,000 launches into space, and they’ve ended up leaving a mark, and now scientists are worried about the litter they’ve left behind. ‘Space junk‘ are the small objects that we’ve left behind in space.They include things like old satellites, gloves, and toolkits accidentally dropped by astronauts. In 2014, the International Space Station had to move three times to avoid lethal chunks of space debris. The problem also threatens crucial and costly satellites in orbit. So what is the scale of the space junk problem, and what can we do about it?
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As Seen From Space
In retrospect, it seems that everyone I’ve met wanted to be an astronaut at some point in their life. And then we found out about the mind-blowing mental requirements, and hastily adjusted our horizons to firemen or veterinarians, or for the ambitious, treasure hunter. But today’s astronauts aren’t the chiseled-from-fossilized-textbook astronauts of the past (at least, that’s how I’ve imagined them) – besides academic brilliance, creative thunderstorms seem to be commonplace in those launched into space. Continue reading
