Yes, this is a paper on space debris. No, the research is not mine, the writing is. Effectively, I was given a project on transitions with a bunch of bullet points and I had to connect it all into something coherent with enough flow to not scramble brains. I won’t show you what the original material looked like, but I promise the finished product is a lot better. And hey, it’s kind of an interesting topic, so here it is.
There is a lot of space debris floating around the earth. In fact, experts are monitoring about 200,000 pieces of the orbiting space junk, and they believe that there are more than a million out there. This space “junk” consists of burned-out rocket parts, pieces of spacecraft, and parts of defunct communication and weather satellites, the combination of which certainly makes the million-piece estimate feasible.
While some of these pieces break orbit and enter the atmosphere, not many of them actually make it all the way to the ground. Some have, but most of them landed in the oceans or in remote areas of the earth. While a few people have been hit by space debris, it’s an incredibly rare occurrence, and therefore not a significant cause for concern.
What is a significant cause for concern is the damage that space debris can do — in space. There is a very serious risk that orbiting satellites and spacecraft could be hit by space debris, and this could badly damage the functional equipment. One of the more important — and more concerning — orbiting objects at risk is the International Space Station, as both a large piece of equipment and one with people in it.
There’s only so much that we can do to avoid these collisions, but we are trying. If sensitive satellites or spacecraft are on a collision course with space debris, engineers try to maneuver them so they can avoid impact. Possibly more importantly, experts are devising guidelines for those launching new space vehicles, like using orbits that avoid existing space debris. These guidelines would also make those launching new spacecraft responsible for safely disposing of their equipment after the completion of their missions, hopefully decreasing the accumulation of space debris and making space a little bit safer.
