Orbital pollution

Via io9, check out this disturbing video of Earth’s nearest space neighbors.

Yes, I realize each article of space garbage is many orders of magnitude smaller than the pixels used to represent it in the video, but we sure are good at cluttering up our aerospace. Consider the near-misses and close calls that the ISS has had over the past few months, and extrapolate that out — each one of those is a bullet zipping around the Earth at such high velocity that it could wreck any of our legitimate satellites or space missions.

We need to start taking better care of our space. If we’re ever going to get off this rock, in fact, we need to learn to stop wrecking every environment we dare to dip our big toes into.

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Orbital pollution
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4 thoughts on “Orbital pollution

  1. 4

    I think it was just last year when for the first time two (artificial) satellites were destroyed in a direct collision. I doubt that will be the last time.

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