We were chatting with our minister, Dr. Michel Dunn, at breakfast in the Capitol restaurant last Thursday morning about the upcoming Earth Day weekend and a new program at our church that aims to reduce our carbon footprint—-another one of those phrases that is fingernails on the blackboard to some folks (even those who think a tree needs a good hug sometimes).
We talked about how mankind has an outstanding record of trashing its surroundings.
We once did a story at the Missourinet about how much it costs the Highway Department to pick up roadside trash in which we said the department spent the equivalent one year of the costs of building a two-lane highway between Jefferson City and Columbia.
One thing led to another in our conversation and we talked about our bigger surroundings—how much junk there is circling the earth. It’s gotten to the point that anybody launching a satellite or a crewed spacecraft has to calculate where the junk is and try to fit the flight within it. And we’ve heard some stories about the space station getting hit. Space.com recently reported that as of last December, the ISS has made course corrections to avoid satellite and other debris 32 times since 1999.
The European Space Agency reported, as of March 27:
Number of rocket launches since the start of the space age in 1957:
About 6380 (excluding failures)
Number of satellites these rocket launches have placed into Earth orbit:
About 15430*
Number of these still in space:
About 10290
Number of these still functioning:
About 7500
Number of debris objects regularly tracked by Space Surveillance Networks and maintained in their catalogue:
About 33010
Estimated number of break-ups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation:
More than 640
Total mass of all space objects in Earth orbit:
More than 10800 tonnes
Not all objects are tracked and catalogued. The number of debris objects estimated based on statistical models to be in orbit (MASTER-8, future population 2021)
36500 space debris objects greater than 10 cm
1000000 space debris objects from greater than 1 cm to 10 cm
130 million space debris objects from greater than 1 mm to 1 cm
How big is that: Our calculator shows 10 centimeters is about 3.9 inches. Doesn’t seem very big but when it’s whizzing along at 17,500 mph it can cause serious damage.
Some of this stuff eventually will lose enough momentum to burn up as it hurtles out of orbit. But more seems to be going up than seems to becoming down.
*We checked the United Nation’s Office of Objects Launched Into Outer Space yesterday (Sunday the 23rd) and it was counting 15,442 objects that had been launched into outer space.
And this is just stuff flying around in near earth.
Twelve Americans walked on the moon 1969-1972. The Atlantic magazine reported in its December 19, 2012 issue that almost 400,000 pounds of human-made material was littering the moon, including these items left behind by the six Apollo landings:
- more than 70 spacecraft, including rovers, modules, and crashed orbiters
- 5 American flags
- 2 golf balls
- 12 pairs of boots
- TV cameras
- film magazines
- 96 bags of urine, feces, and vomit
- numerous Hasselbad cameras and accessories
- several improvised javelins
- various hammers, tongs, rakes, and shovels
- backpacks
- insulating blankets
- utility towels
- used wet wipes
- personal hygiene kits
- empty packages of space food
- a photograph of Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke’s family
- a feather from Baggin, the Air Force Academy’s mascot falcon, used to conduct Apollo 15’s famous “hammer-feather drop” experiment
- a small aluminum sculpture, a tribute to the American and Soviet “fallen astronauts” who died in the space race—left by the crew of Apollo 15
- a patch from the never-launched Apollo 1 mission, which ended prematurely when flames engulfed the command module during a 1967 training exercise, killing three U.S. astronauts
- a small silicon disk bearing goodwill messages from 73 world leaders, and left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 11
- a silver pin, left by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean
- a medal honoring Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin
- a cast golden olive branch left by the crew of Apollo 11
Some of these items were left as tributes. Others were left because the landing capsule didn’t need extra weight as it headed back to the command module and, eventually, back home. The two golf balls were taken to the Moon by Alan Shepherd on Apollo 14. He had the head of six iron golf club modified so it could fit on one of the lunar digging shovels. He hit the two balls, the second of which he said, tongue-in-cheek, went “miles and miles and miles.” NACA later scanned the film and determined the balls actually traveled about 24 yards and about 40 yards.
Writer Megan Garber also noted various craft were crashed into the moon intentionally, or landed on the moon with no way to get back—more than 70, and that was more than a decade ago.
Now, back to all of that stuff in orbit. Not all of it us junk. A growing amount is satellites. Of late, the biggest (worst?) contributor is SpaceX with its Starlink satellite system. It wants to have at least 12,000 operational satellites in low earth orbit soon and has applied for approval of—get this—30,000 more. It claims these satellites have the means to move out of the way of things. Space.com reports that SpaceX already had about 4,000 satellites up.
Jonathan McDowell with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Space.com in February, “It’s going to like an interstate highway at rush hour in a snowstorm with everyone driving too fast except that there are multiple interstate highways crossing each other with no stoplights.” as Starlink keeps shooting up satellites, joined with OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper.
Trash above. Trash below. We produce it by the ton. Earth day reminds us we can find some better ways to do some things. At least, a little bit.