Space Station Out of the Firing Line
Nasa officials admitted yesterday that they have been forced to move the International Space Station (ISS) to protect it and its crew of three from a piece of flying junk.
As they did so, a British scientist was warning the world that - in addition to the natural menace of meteorites - 2,000 tonnes of refuse was now circling the planet at 18,000mph.
The ISS weighs 150 tonnes and is bigger than a three bedroom house. Its designers gave it a thicker skin as protection from collisions.
Since astronauts began using it in 2000, 28 spacewalks have been carried out. Each time the astronaut has been at risk from shards of metal, ballpoint pens, spanners, bits of glass, camera lens hoods and other objects independently orbiting the earth far faster than a rifle bullet.
Richard Crowther, a space scientist at QinetiQ, formerly the defence research agency, reports in the journal Science that comet dust is a permanent danger. But since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, space has become a dumping ground for human hardware.
Space agencies now routinely track the larger lumps of metal to avoid collisions with the thousands of costly satellites in orbit.
But Dr Crowther points out that there are 100,000 objects in orbit too small to be monitored but still powerful enough to burst through any lightweight shielding.
"The space debris population now totals more than 2m kilograms within 2,000km of Earth," Dr Crowther says.
"A small coin travelling at 10km a second through space will have the same impact energy as a small bus travelling at 100kmh on the ground."
The windows of the US space shuttle are changed at intervals because they become scarred by space dust and tiny specks of shattered satellites.
Astronauts and cosmonauts now routinely send their rubbish home on supply ships rather than discard it. But the flying waste in space includes some unexpected hazards.
One British scientist at the Natural History Museum, studying the skin of a recovered spacecraft, found a trace of urine.
It almost certainly dated from the heroic age of space exploration, when Apollo astronauts would throw bags of what Nasa called "post-nutritive substances" out when required to do a spacewalk.
The bags have gone on whirling around the planet at 18,000mph, another gruesome accident waiting to happen.
As they did so, a British scientist was warning the world that - in addition to the natural menace of meteorites - 2,000 tonnes of refuse was now circling the planet at 18,000mph.
The ISS weighs 150 tonnes and is bigger than a three bedroom house. Its designers gave it a thicker skin as protection from collisions.
Since astronauts began using it in 2000, 28 spacewalks have been carried out. Each time the astronaut has been at risk from shards of metal, ballpoint pens, spanners, bits of glass, camera lens hoods and other objects independently orbiting the earth far faster than a rifle bullet.
Richard Crowther, a space scientist at QinetiQ, formerly the defence research agency, reports in the journal Science that comet dust is a permanent danger. But since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, space has become a dumping ground for human hardware.
Space agencies now routinely track the larger lumps of metal to avoid collisions with the thousands of costly satellites in orbit.
But Dr Crowther points out that there are 100,000 objects in orbit too small to be monitored but still powerful enough to burst through any lightweight shielding.
"The space debris population now totals more than 2m kilograms within 2,000km of Earth," Dr Crowther says.
"A small coin travelling at 10km a second through space will have the same impact energy as a small bus travelling at 100kmh on the ground."
The windows of the US space shuttle are changed at intervals because they become scarred by space dust and tiny specks of shattered satellites.
Astronauts and cosmonauts now routinely send their rubbish home on supply ships rather than discard it. But the flying waste in space includes some unexpected hazards.
One British scientist at the Natural History Museum, studying the skin of a recovered spacecraft, found a trace of urine.
It almost certainly dated from the heroic age of space exploration, when Apollo astronauts would throw bags of what Nasa called "post-nutritive substances" out when required to do a spacewalk.
The bags have gone on whirling around the planet at 18,000mph, another gruesome accident waiting to happen.
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