Hey friends! have you ever watched Gravity movie? Problem raised due to space pollution which led to death of astronauts is clearly shown there. We think this was just movie. It has no relation with real world. But actually, this assumption is wrong. Space pollution is increasing day by day. And it threatens the various space missions and specially very dangerous to manned space missions. So, in this post we will mainly discuss about space pollution often called space debris, ways to dispose space pollutions, impacts of space debris and what are the steps taken to reduce space pollution. so, Let’s start.
Contents
1.whats is space pollution?
2.impacts of space debris
3.disposal of space debris
4.steps to reduce space pollution
What is space pollution?
Space debris are the residues machinery or any piece of machinery or debris left by humans in space. They can be residues of non – working satellites which continuously rotating around earth. Below is picture in which you can interpret the number of satellites around earth. White dots represent the satellites.
Majorly there are two types of space debris one is the orbital and another is geosynchronous.
Orbital debris are the pieces of
satellites, abandoned launch vehicle stages, fragmented debris, encircling
earth. There are nearly 23,000 pieces of debris larger than softball orbiting
the earth which travels at high speed up to 17,500 mph. which is highly greater
than speed of bullet. They can easily damage any working satellites or
spacecrafts or even threats to international space station. There are half a
million pieces of junk in the size of marble. And around 100 million pieces of
junk having diameter nearly 0.04 inches.
Geosynchronous orbit is like junkyard in
space. Government usually dumps the non-functional satellites beyond geosynchronous
orbit which is 35786 km from earth surface.
Collisions of space Debris:
Non-working satellites serves major role
in space pollution. Because of the non-functional satellites humans does not
have access to control them. resulting there are chances to collisions of
satellites to one another resulting in formations of thousands of space debris
disbursed into space.
1.Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite:
On 11 January 2007, Chinese military destroyed the Fengyun-1C weather satellite which results in creation of more than 3000 fragments (around 20% of space junk). Within two years all these debris got spread into space and encircles the earth.
2.Russian spacecraft:
On 10 February 2009 non-functioning Russian spacecraft collided and destroyed the functioning U.S commercial spacecraft. this collision added 2300 more traceable debris into space and many more non traceable pieces into space
Impacts of space debris:
There are many cases when debris are
collided with spacecrafts. Space debris travels even faster than speed of bullet,
so the fact that the spacesuits are generally bullet proof to avoid danger during
spacewalk.
1.International space station has also hit by fast moving space debris which has damaged the canadarm-2 robotic arm of space station.
2.Space debris completely penetrated the antenna dish of Hubble space telescope.
There are often chances that the bigger
non-functional satellites may directly fallen to ground if they survived by
burning due to friction with atmosphere while entering the earth atmosphere.
This may threaten peoples on earth
Ways to reduce space debris:
Number of ways have been proposed to decrease the space debris
1.The main and useful ways to reduce space debris is to reuse the
rockets. Many of the space organizations have evolved technique to reuse the
rockets.
2.Small low orbit
debris can be pulled to earth orbit so they will automatically burn in air
before reaching to earth surface.
3.European space
agency (ESA) has planned first space mission to removal of space debris. And
they are planning to launch it by 2025.
4.Using high powered
plasma lasers to slow down the speed of debris and then re-enter into earth
orbit and either burn up or may fall into oceans. This method is called laser
orbital debris removal (LODR).
5. Another way is to
build self-destructing spacecrafts which will have jellyfish like tentacles.
They will grab the space junk and then move towards earth, where the both
satellite and space junk will burn up due to friction. This model was proposed
by Swiss researchers at federal institute of technology.
So this is enough for today. We will meet again with new interesting topic. Have a great day 😊😊