We would have never thought
that there would come a time when, not only our planet, but the space itself
would start to become polluted by us. But do you know that our beloved Earth is
getting covered by a blanket of millions and billions of man-made chunks of
space debris?
Well, space debris is a collection of useless objects that are in orbit around
the Earth, that could be broken satellites or satellites that have reached the
end of their life,rocket stages that have launched satellites into space,pieces
of metal, discarded rocket parts, bolts and other launch hardware and not only
that but smash-ups between chunks of space junk over the years, too, contribute
in it as much of the debris is made up of bits of other debris.
According to NASA’s estimate, more than 100 million man-made objects the size of
a grain of salt are orbiting the planet. And about 500,000 objects that are
roughly the size of a marble are also out there, as well as 23,000 objects are
those the size of a softball or larger.
The main worry regardingthese space debris is their possible collision with
active or functioning satellites or spacecraft.
In those 100 million pieces of debris, the ones that are larger than 5 cm are
capable of doing much more damage. However it is the debris over 10 cm (3.9
inches) that are extremely dangerous. In order to be safe from such large pieces
of junk, the spacecrafts have to stay out of their way to avoid collision. If a
collision occurs, there might be additional resulting fragments. Any fragments
over 1 kg (2.2 lb.) can become an additional collision risk. Scientists predict
that such collisions will create more junk and trigger a chain reaction once it
reaches a critical number of such objects.
So what would happen if a collision occurred? Well ifany functional satellite is
hit by a piece of space debris, it would either be severely damaged or
completely destroyed. And if that happens to even just a few major satellites,
then life here on Earth would be drastically affected by it. Live television
broadcasts, the Internet, GPS, and even your mobile phones and cellular service
could be affected!
So to avoid any potential collision, the space debris is constantly monitored
from Earth. And even aboard the International Space Station (ISS), with changes
in its orbit occurring almost regularly. There are times, however, when debris
is noticed too late for the ISS to be moved in time. In these types of tense
situations, all the astronauts have to make their way to the emergency shelter
areas and sit out the impact.Keeping in mind that even a minor change in
position takes days to complete, the International Space Station (ISS) had to be
moved three times in 2014 in order to avoid a potentially catastrophic and
deadly collision with a junk!
We have created trouble for ourselves in the space also. If no way is found to
suspend this ever-growing amount of dead, man-made items floating around our
planet, then it is predicted that in only a few hundred years, we will
essentially be trapped on Earth, with space missions being impossible to launch
due to almost certain collision and loss of life. There even might be the real
possibility of a large piece of space junk re-entering the atmosphere and not
burning up, becoming a meteor dashing toward the ground!
The amount of gadgets and even life-saving devices utilized by many people on
Earth today as a by-product of space exploration is enormous. Should we ever
stop pushing to explore space simply because it is no longer a possibility, how
many future developments might humanity miss out on?