Saturday 25 March 2017

Space Pollution

On of the major drawbacks of anywhere hosting humans is that we do tend to pollute the place, whether it is the land, sea or space, we leave our rubbish there.
We have land that is uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years, a 270,000 square mile wide rubbish patch swilling around in the Atlantic Ocean and above our heads thousands of bits of Space debris whizzing around like bullets. 
The International Space Station is constantly manoeuvring to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision with space junk ranging in size from millimetres to two buses but the world of business are growing increasingly concerned that one of their satellites will take a direct hit.
Of greater concern to us is if a communication satellite got taken out and the Sat Nav, mobile phone or TV pictures go missing.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs have been working with NASA and the European Space Agency and have developed a set of guidelines on space debris mitigation where when an orbital mission is planned, it must include a strategy to remove the spacecraft from the orbit within 25 years by either propelling it out into space or dragging it down to be burnt up in the atmosphere.
Humans eh? We have land, oceans and rivers that we continue to pollute until they become almost unusable and now we are doing exactly the same with space.

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