Space Junk

According to NASA report in 2013, more than

500,000 pieces of debris, or “space junk”, are
tracked as they orbit the Earth.
 What is Space Junk?
• Space junk, or space debris, or space trash, are
 man-made objects remaining in space
though they no longer serve any useful
purpose.
• About 50% of the objects are fragments from
explosions and breakups of satellites or
spacecraft.
How did it all start?
• Mankind’s journey into
space began in 1957
when the Soviet Union
launched Sputnik, the
first artificial satellite. 

• Since that time more

than 4,800 spacecraft
have been launched into
orbit.
 Examples Space Junk
Usual space junk includes rocket boosters, pieces that
came loose from spacecraft, and fragments and
particles.
Famous Space Junk
There are a couple of relatively
famous pieces of space trash.
One is the glove that floated away
from the Gemini 4 crew (Ed
White) in 1965 during the first
spacewalk by U.S. astronauts.

The other is the camera

Michael Collins lost
during the Gemini 10
mission.
 Space Velocities
Orbital velocities can be up to 56 km/h which is
about 1 km per minute.
 Danger in Space
• The main problem with space trash is the danger it poses
to working satellites and manned spacecraft.
• Orbital velocities mean that centimeter-sized debris can
seriously damage or disable an operational spacecraft.
 The Size of Space Junk
• There are more
than 20,000
pieces of debris
larger than a
softball orbiting
the Earth.
• The diameter of a
soft ball is about
3.8 inches, which
is about 10 cm.
 Pieces that Can and Can’t be Tracked
• There are 500,000 pieces of debris the size of a
marble (2 cm) or larger, so they are big enough
and can be tracked from the Earth.
• However, there are many millions of pieces of
debris that are so small they can’t be tracked.
 Collisions
The greatest risk to space missions comes from non-trackable
debris. With so much orbital debris, there have been surprisingly
few disastrous collisions.
• In fact a number of space shuttle windows have been replaced
because of damage caused by material that was analyzed and
shown to be paint flecks.
 Collisions
• In 1996, a French satellite was hit and damaged by
debris from a French rocket that had exploded a decade
earlier.
 Collisions
• On February 10, 2009, a defunct Russian satellite
collided with and destroyed a functioning U.S. commercial
satellite. The collision added more than 2,000 pieces of
trackable debris to the inventory of space junk.
 Collisions
• China's 2007 anti-satellite test, which used a missile to
destroy an old weather satellite, added more than 3,000 pieces
to the debris problem.
 Measures to Prevent Collisions
There are some measures that are undertaken to minimize the
danger from space junk and avoid collisions.
• There are highly accurate catalogues on objects in Earth
orbit.
• The debris which is as big as 5 cm and more is tracked.
 Measures to Prevent Collisions
• The cosmonauts have special guidelines which instruct
them what to do if there is a possibility of collision.
• There are special avoidance maneuvers which a
spacecraft performs if the probability of collision is very
high.
 Future
Future plans include a cooperative effort among the
governments of many nations to stop littering space
and to possibly clean up the trash already there.
 Future

Who knows, an occupation for the near future might

be as a space trash collector.
THANK YOU!