Space junk
When satellites reach the end of their useful life, they may be deliberately directed back in such a way that they burn up as they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere or come down in the oceans or away from please where they could cause damage. So far, no one has been killed or seriously injured by space debris. The 69 tonne Skylab re-entered in 1979, scattering large shunks in the Australian desert, and Russian's Mir space station, which weighed 120 tonnes, came down in the Pacific.
About 100-200 objects, each larger than a football, re-enter every year, but there are still many pieces of space junk in orbit. A survey carried out in jun 2000 calculated that there are 90 space probes and 2,671 satellites still in space. There are also 6,096 other pieces of debris, including parts of rockets: an Ariane rocket booster exploded in 1991 space shuttle Discovery STS-48 narrowly avoided a discarded Soviet rocket.
All kinds of tools and equipment, have been lost during spacewalks, including the Hasselblad camera dropped in 1966 by Gemini 10 astronuas Michael Collins. Other items included thousands of "dead" satellites and fragments that have not re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and burned up. These survive as orbiting hazards to spacecraft such as the space shuttle its windows are bombarded and have to be replaced before the shuttle can fly again. Even tiny objects can be a danger in soasp. Flecks of paint from spacecraft travelling at 40,000km/h are able to puncture a spacesuit.
When satellites reach the end of their useful life, they may be deliberately directed back in such a way that they burn up as they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere or come down in the oceans or away from please where they could cause damage. So far, no one has been killed or seriously injured by space debris. The 69 tonne Skylab re-entered in 1979, scattering large shunks in the Australian desert, and Russian's Mir space station, which weighed 120 tonnes, came down in the Pacific.
About 100-200 objects, each larger than a football, re-enter every year, but there are still many pieces of space junk in orbit. A survey carried out in jun 2000 calculated that there are 90 space probes and 2,671 satellites still in space. There are also 6,096 other pieces of debris, including parts of rockets: an Ariane rocket booster exploded in 1991 space shuttle Discovery STS-48 narrowly avoided a discarded Soviet rocket.
All kinds of tools and equipment, have been lost during spacewalks, including the Hasselblad camera dropped in 1966 by Gemini 10 astronuas Michael Collins. Other items included thousands of "dead" satellites and fragments that have not re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and burned up. These survive as orbiting hazards to spacecraft such as the space shuttle its windows are bombarded and have to be replaced before the shuttle can fly again. Even tiny objects can be a danger in soasp. Flecks of paint from spacecraft travelling at 40,000km/h are able to puncture a spacesuit.
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