Sunday 22 May 2016

HOW MUCH JUNK IS IN SPACE? WHY SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT JUNK SPACE?


Every particle  that measures more than one centimetre of diameter is junk space. But only 21.000 particles measures more than four centimetres. We insist a lot in junk space because, even if the particle is very small, it’s speed per hour is incredibly high.




Today the Earth is all surrounded by junk from satellites, rocketships and spacecrafts that collide forming a giant cloud of waste that covers our planet.

After 56 years of the exploration of space the human being had launched around 6,600 satellites, and only 1,000 are still working.

In space there is arround 6,300 tonnes of waste. The 95% of the junk space comes from satellites that humans don´t use, and the other 5% comes from the remains of spacecrafts, space explosions and fuels.

People calculate that, with the 60 or 70 new satellites we send each year, junk space will increase four times, so the possibility of waste colliding with the Earth will increase untill we have catastrofic accidents.

And if you say, “It is just a one centimetre piece of metal, it won´t hurt anyone.” Then you are wrong, we should worry about all this waste because, if we don´t stop now, in a few years time, all this junk space will collide with our planet. It is only a one centimetre piece of metal, but it travels between 1,235 and 28,968 km/h, enough to go trough a satellite or a space station.

Junk space is a serious problem in our society, scientists are already looking for a way to solve it, but we don´t have to worry about this waste yet, since it will pass a long time untill all this junk space reaches our planet. 

No comments:

Post a Comment