Many of you saw the images this past week of a piece of space debris traveling in space near the space shuttle. The shuttle's return was delayed in order to inspect the vehicle to ensure the floating object was not a critical piece of the shuttle that had broken off.
In the end, the shuttle got the OK to return to earth, but the piece of debris was never identified.
As conscious as we are about foreign object debris (FOD) in aviation, I imagine that NASA would be ten-times more sensitive. So I find it funny that NASA could not rule out if the debris was a tool that had floated away from the shuttle bay. Is there no tool accountability in space?
A few years ago I met an editor for a space magazine. He told me that there were thousands of pieces of space debris orbiting around the earth. I had never thought about the problem of space debris before, but soon found out it is a big problem. NASA's Orbital Debris Program office says there are approximately 11,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters known to exist. If you think that is a high number, hold on it gets worse. NASA says that there are more than 100,000 pieces of debris between 1 and 10 centimeters. If you go smaller than 1 centimeter, it estimates there are tens of millions of objects.
NASA says these objects are traveling at average speeds of 7 to 8 kilometers per second. Can you imagine the damage that could be caused by a softball-sized piece of space debris hitting the shuttle or the international space station going that fast?
Kind of makes the danger of foam falling off external tanks during takeoff seem kind of small.
If you want to learn more about space debris, you can visit www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov.
Thanks for reading!
Joe Escobar