YouTube education channel Kurzgesagt explores the increasing hazard caused by every new rocket we launch into space and the deadly cloak of debris that may one day make space travel too dangerous to attempt.
Previously: Eye Of The Beholder
Tag Archives: debris
Ingredients; white marine plastic debris objects collected in two single visits to a nature reserve on the East Coast of England.
Ingredients; marine debris balloons collected from around the world.
Ingredients; disgarded fishing line that has formed nest-like balls due to tidal and oceanic movement. Additives; other debris collected in its path.
Ingredients; plastic debris that includes surface text. (ironic random arrangement of 4 pieces of plastic that suggest a warning; ‘Sea’ ‘AND’ ‘HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES’ ‘FOUL’)
633 marine plastic debris footballs (and pieces of) recovered from 23 countries and islands within Europe, from 104 different beaches, and by 62 members of the public, in just 4 months.
150 tonnes of pre-production plastic pellets (nurdles) spilt from a cargo container during Typhoon Vincente on 23rd July 2012 adds to Hong Kong’s waste issues in its seas and on its beaches.
Discarded cigarette lighters make reference to our single-use throw away society. The panda, a national embel of China represents endangered species and faces away from the group symbolising mother nature turning its back on man’s inability to take ownership of its waste.
Composites (with ingredients listed) by Leeds-based photographer Mandy Barker, who collaborates with marine scientists, collecting plastic debris from oceans around the world to document the worsening pandemic in her dreamily sinister Photoshopped swirls.
The recipient of a National Geographic Society Grant, Barker’s work will be on display at Photo London Art Fair 2018 next month.
Yes, probably.
The graveyard of outer space – crowded with some 17,000 spent rocket stages, dead or dying satellites and countless crumbs of human-made orbital flotsam – is building toward critical mass, colliding, creating more debris. According to experts at the John Hopkins Space Department, it’s now inevitable that every satellite in orbit will be ‘percussively decommissioned’. According to Gen. William Shelton, commander of USAF Space Command:
“The traffic is increasing. We’ve now got over 50 nations that are participants in the space environment,” Shelton said last month during the Space Foundation’s 27th National Space Symposium. Given existing space situational awareness capabilities, over 20,000 objects are now tracked.
“We catalog those routinely and keep track of them. That number is projected to triple by 2030, and much of that is improved sensors, but some of that is increased traffic,” Shelton said. “Then if you think about it, there are probably 10 times more objects in space than we’re able to track with our sensor capability today. Those objects are untrackable … yet they are lethal to our space systems — to military space systems, civil space systems, commercial — no one’s immune from the threats that are in orbit today, just due to the traffic in space.”
Ugly Truth of Space Junk: Orbital Debris Problem to Triple by 2030 (Space.com)