Space is a dangerous place

Something unusual happened on the International Space Station today. The astronauts all got into rockets in case they had to leave the station and return to Earth. Why? Because a piece of space junk was heading their way and they weren’t sure if it was going to hit the station.

What does space junk consist of? Whole or pieces of satellites and rockets, as well as fragments from collisions and explosions.

Space junk forces astronauts into escape pods

Space junk is a serious problem — there are thousands of large pieces and millions of small pieces of junk orbiting the Earth. Even small pieces can damage a satellite or spacecraft. The problem has been around for a while but nothing’s been done so far. So what are we going to do about it? Here’s one possibility: Swiss scientists are working on a “janitor satellite” that will go around collecting junk.

Swiss satellite will clean up space junk

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2012 at 5:06 pm and is filed under From the web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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