NASA Warns of Cluttered Space

Ant wrote to mention a National Geographic article looking at the cluttered nature of Near-Earth Orbit. From the article: "Since the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik I satellite in 1957, humans have been generating space junk. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking over 13,000 human-made objects larger than four inches (ten centimeters) in diameter orbiting the Earth. These include both operational spacecraft and debris such as derelict rocket bodies. 'Of the 13,000 objects, over 40 percent came from breakups of both spacecraft and rocket bodies,'Johnson said."

Comments

Breakdown by Country

[eldavojohn]

Space.com has a breakdown of responsibility by country of some of the larger debris in space.

And if you're really hardcore into space debris (it's hard to even type that without laughing), Orbital Debris Quarterly News is your magazine!

See it for yourself

[Guysmiley777]

Java based orbit tracker courtesy of NASA:

http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3 D.html

Re:Looking towards the future

[Rei]

LEO's pretty fast (hours to years), but for specifics, it really depends on the orbit and the object. A lightweight object with a large cross section at a 180km orbit may take only a day to reenter. A heavy object with a small cross section at 450 km may stay up for a decade.

Unfortunately (assuming my simulations are correct), orbits tend not to decay circularly. Rather, they tend to become more elliptical until the orbit finally intersects the atmosphere enough that it can't escape. Thus, you can't count on them being in too low of an orbit for you to collide with them as their orbit decays.

Now, GEO's a whole different story. Things in GEO tend to stay up, but they tend to not stay where you want them to stay ;)