HOUSTON (AP) -- It's a
junkyard out there in space and sometimes astronauts accidentally contribute to
the litter. In 1965, the first American spacewalker, Ed White, lost a spare
glove when he went outside for the first time. From that time on, astronauts have
accidentally added some of the more unusual items to the 100,000 pieces of
space trash that circle Earth.
Last July, spacewalker
Piers Sellers sheepishly reported that he lost a spatula. Nicknamed "spatsat''
by space junk watchers, it returns to Earth in a fireball early next month.
This week the Atlantis
astronauts made their own contributions to the space debris in low orbit: a
couple of bolts that escaped from the addition they were connecting to the
international space station.
To engineers, this isn't
funny. Many of those pieces of space junk can kill astronauts, puncture
satellites or at the very least scratch up expensive space shuttle windows.
"It's one of these
problems that is growing in seriousness,'' said William Ailor, director of the
Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corp. in Los
Angeles. "It's really the small things that will get you.''
Using radar and telescope
sensors, NASA and the Air Force track objects bigger than about 4 inches. The
official "box score'' of that space debris as of Thursday was 9,925. But
the 90,000 objects smaller than that can be as dangerous, zipping around Earth
at more than 15,000 mph. They are just harder to track.
NASA has even seen debris
hits of dried-up urine, toothpaste, and shaving cream -- all from space shuttle
waste dumps -- in an experiment placed outside of the Russian space station
Mir, said officials at the NASA orbital debris program lab. An Indonesian
satellite was struck by urine and fecal matter. Now NASA doesn't dump human
waste outside much anymore.
Of all the items followed
by the Air Force, the more unusual ones are those "that aren't necessarily
meant to drop,'' said Air Force Space Protection Officer David Ward of the
First Space Control Squadron in Cheyenne Mountain. "The astronauts didn't
necessarily mean to let go of the bolts the last couple days, but that
happens.''
So when spacewalkers
venture outside, NASA makes sure everything is tethered -- tools, bolts, the
astronauts themselves. Think of it as wrapping a Christmas present with
everything tied up to something, the scissors, the paper, the scraps of paper
not used, said NASA spokesman Phil West, a former spacewalk tool engineer.
"You worry about
(losing tools) all the time,'' said former astronaut and spacewalker Jay Apt,
noting that he never lost anything.
And well they should worry.
Not only can space junk
damage or kill, you can get sued, too. There are lawyers who monitor space junk
because there's a complex legal treaty about who is responsible when the
man-made debris cripples a satellite worth hundreds of millions of dollars,
said Mark Matney, a scientist in the orbital debris program at Johnson Space
Center.
In the 1960s, America launched bunches of copper needles
into Earth's orbit in an ill-conceived plan for post-nuclear war
communications, Matney said. Many of those needles are still up there. Other
intentionally jettisoned space junk once included bags of trash thrown
overboard from the Russian space station Mir and pieces of equipment pitched
into orbit from spacewalkers fixing the Hubble Space Telescope.
"I guess it's a
junkyard; most of the problems are little things that cause dings, like your
car, I guess,'' Matney said. Even an object the size of a medicine tablet "will
do a significant amount of damage to most spacecraft.''
And there are much bigger
objects to worry about, including giant rocket bodies from launches dating back
to 1958. But those are often in the most hazardous area for space junk, which
is about 400 miles above the space station and shuttle, Matney said.
Ask Matney what the biggest
piece of space junk in orbit now is and he quickly says it is the international
space station. The astronauts living aboard the orbiting lab may not think of
it as junk, but to Matney "every spacecraft is destined to become debris.''
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