How Dangerous is the 'Space Debris' By Katherine Lightwood

How Dangerous is the 'Space Debris'

By Katherine Lightwood 

Today while surfing the internet when I found an amazing article on space junk and it just terrified me from the core. The possibility of getting hit by a destroyed spacecraft or satellite made me so anxious. A shiver ran down my spine as I thought of how a big catastrophe it could create if we don't consider to take some precautions over this celestial space junk. I remember a movie I saw a few years ago called 'Gravity'. And man, what a frustrating feeling that was, to see the struggle of that astronaut who got hit by those space debris. The movie was so realistic and Sandra Bullock's acting was just amazing. 

On October 4th, 1957, the first satellite Sputnik was launched into space. Although it got burned in the atmosphere 3 month later, many satellites launched since then have not, leaving us with the virtual junkyard orbiting the earth. Now, this debris represents a real threat to the television, communication, GPS satellites and also the astronauts. Most of the space junk orbiting us is about 2000 km above the earth's surface. There are about 2300 objects larger than a softball and of other different sizes orbiting around the earth in about 7 to 8 km per second. But since the objects are moving relative to one another, the average speed of a collision is about 10 km per second. And an object about a size of a softball or even a small glass marble going 10 km per second has about the same impact as of a mid-size car going nearly 200 km per hour. And that's enough force to destroy any satellite in orbit.

Fortunately, till today, there hasn't been any serious collision between manned spacecraft and this debris. But in 2009 a single crash between two satellites released a wapping 200 new pieces of debris. And it was really terrifying. If we don't do anything soon enough, the outer space will soon become inaccessible because of a large amount of debris and high risk of collision.

So, a group of Scientists from Switzerland determined to do something about the problem by extending their clean country reputation into outer space. The Swiss space center has launched a programme called 'clean space one'  which is a demonstration of the capability to remove space debris.  And the idea of the project is to go and remove one of two satellites from Switzerland. And one of the two satellites is appropriately named swiss cube.

So, the mission for clean space one is a proof of concept that a janitor satellite can be sent into space to grab a piece of space junk, in this case, swiss cube, and bring it back to the atmosphere where it will burn up. But to assemble with the space junk a small janitor needs an incredibly efficient engine. The project will be started, hopefully in the year 2020. And it will do a systematic removal of large debris at the rate of five or more per year in order to contain the increase of debris density in lower earth orbit. And then hopefully our space will continue to become accessible again.

So, that was my thought of the day. To see more posts like this make sure to visit our main page and facebook page. And do not forget to visit our institute's page to know more about graphic design, 3D, animation courses and other awesome stuff. Till then good day to you.