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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-a-piece-of-junk! dept.

Scientists sounded the alarm Tuesday over the problems posed to space missions from orbital junk—the accumulating debris from mankind's six-decade exploration of the cosmos.

In less than a quarter of a century, the number of orbiting fragments large enough to destroy a spacecraft has more than doubled, a conference in Germany heard.

And the estimated tally of tiny objects—which can harm or degrade spacecraft in the event of a collision, and are hard to track—is now around 150 million.

"We are very much concerned," said Rolf Densing, director of operations at the European Space Agency (ESA), pleading for a worldwide effort to tackle the mess.

"This problem can only be solved globally."

Travelling at up to 28,000 kilometres (17,500 miles) per hour, even a minute object impacts with enough energy to damage the surface of a satellite or manned spacecraft.

If you always wondered why the Death Star had a trash compactor, here's your answer.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:46PM (#496931)

    So the James bond villains were actually trying to help everyone before the problem got bad?

    Then they went insane when the stupid people sent hardcore agents after them and now they just play with the shark pool attaching lasers to their heads!