Space junk is out of control, scientists say

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s a dilemma faced by every adventure traveler: to find the perfect remote spot untouched by modernity, free from cell phones, television, and trash. Of course there is no such place, not even in space. In fact, the orbital detritus of modern life can be downright dangerous, scientists warn.

A new report from the National Research Council says there are so many bits of trash in orbit, ranging from defunct satellites to fragments like nuts and bolts, that they’re bumping into each other, breaking apart, and making more trash. Around 22,000 large pieces of space junk are tracked from the ground, occasionally prompting the International Space Station to maneuver out of the way, and there are hundreds of thousands of more pieces too small to be detected. It amounts to a cloud of trash surrounding the earth, as this NASA image shows.

This puts current astronauts and future space tourists in peril. With the high velocities objects achieve in orbit, it’s like having hundreds of thousands of bullets flying around the Earth.

And it’s getting worse. The BBC reports two satellites crashed in 2009 and broke apart. Also, the Chinese tested a satellite killer in 2007 that successfully smashed up its target into more than 150,000 pieces larger than a centimeter. The U.S. and Soviet Union tested similar weapons back in the 1960s and 1970s, creating their own clouds of debris.

Several manned spacecraft have been hit by space debris. Two Shuttle missions have had radiator panels in the cargo bay punctured by debris. The International Space Station and Mir have both suffered numerous impacts. Sometimes the damage is caused by natural micrometeorites.

One certain impact by space debris was in 1983 when a fleck of paint smacked into the space shuttle Challenger’s front window and left a crater, as you can see in this NASA image.

If a fleck of paint can do this to the Space Shuttle, imagine what an old rocket booster could do.

Fifty years ago today: youngest person in space throws up

by Sean McLachlan on

Fifty years ago today, Gherman Titov became the second man to go into orbit. The first was Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961. Titov was also Soviet, and flew aboard the Vostok-2 mission.

While Gagarin launched into enduring fame and became one of my personal heroes, Titov has been largely forgotten. That’s a shame, because his flight included a number of records and advanced our knowledge of conditions in zero gravity.

Unlike Gagarin’s single-orbit flight, which was largely to see whether the Soviet Union could get a man into space, Vostok-2 on 6 August 1961 was intended to test how well someone could deal with zero gravity for 24 hours. Major Titov was chosen for the task. He was only 25 years old and is still the youngest person ever to have gone into space.

It didn’t all go well. Early in the flight Titov became space sick and while trying to eat lunch on his sixth orbit around the Earth he threw up. The effects of this in a small capsule in zero gravity must have been unpleasant to say the least. Titov was made of tough stuff, though, and took the manual control of the capsule for a time and also snapped a picture of the Earth from space, the first human being to do so. Ten-and-a-half hours into the flight he felt good enough to fall asleep.

That’s probably the most amazing part of the story. I can’t imagine actually falling asleep when Earth is shining outside my window. Perhaps the adreneline rush finally wore off and Titov conked out due to sheer exhaustion. He slept for eight hours. When he woke up he still didn’t feel a hundred percent but was able to keep his breakfast down. After 17 orbits he reentered the atmosphere and safely landed.

One interesting footnote to the flight is that the Soviets made all the radio frequencies between Vostok-2 and ground control public, so that the whole world could listen in as the capsule passed overhead and could track it using directional antennae. This kept anyone from claiming the flight was faked. Conspiracy theorists have been saying ignorant things about the space program for a long time now.

For more information and some cool images, check out the great website Space History Notes and their article on Vostok-2.

Image of Maj. Titov and Vostok 2 patch courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

National Geographic celebrates the last space shuttle mission ever

by Kraig Becker on

Yesterday morning, at 11:30 AM Eastern Time, the Space Shuttle Atlantis blasted off on the last shuttle mission ever. For fans and proponents of space exploration, it was a bittersweet moment to say the least. To celebrate what truly is the end of an era, National Geographic has updated their Space Shuttle Hub page with a look back at the storied vehicle’s tragic and triumphant history.

At various times, NASA‘s fleet of space shuttles has included five different vehicles, including the Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor. The Nat Geo page covers all of them, and even has articles discussing the two orbiters that were lost – the Challenger, which exploded shortly after take-off back in 1986 and Columbia, which tragically burned up on re-entry in 2003. Other articles celebrate the many achievements of the shuttle program over the three decades they have been in service however, giving the remaining three vehicles the final send-off they richly deserve.

During this final flight of the Atlantis, National Geographic space editor Victoria Jaggard will also be posting regular blog updates on the progress of the mission. She has already covered the launch and will continue to add more thoughts and commentary until the shuttle returns to Earth in about two weeks time.

Tomorrow, the Atlantis is scheduled to rendezvous with the International Space Station one final time. While there, the astronauts on board will resupply the ISS and perform routine maintenance on the station, which will be serviced by Russian Soyuz spacecraft in the foreseeable future.

VIDEO: Astronaut’s view of the world

by Meg Nesterov on


Need a few moments of Zen? This video from NASA‘s Johnson Space Center has seven of them, traveling over the Earth from the coast of Namibia to the Amazon Basin to capture an astronaut’s view of the world. The incredible images are narrated by Dr. Justin Wilkinson, a soothing astronaut who points out the many rivers, mountains, deserts, and other features shown on NASA’s camera from far above. You can see Utah‘s Salt Lake, Sicily‘s cloud-covered Mt. Etna; there’s even footage of Hurricane Florence, forming a perfect spiral over the Atlantic Ocean.

Sit back, put the video in full-screen mode, and start dreaming of your next travel destination. What an astronaut’s camera sees.

Virgin Galactic releases first “feathered flight” video

by Stephen Greenwood on

Historical implications aside, one of the most impressive and important aspects of Richard Branson’s upcoming private space line is its distinct mode of atmospheric re-entry.

Thanks to a breakthrough design by legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is one of the first craft to utilize a technique known as “feathered flight” to acheive a safer, more stable method of passing through the various layers of Earth’s atmosphere. After rocketing to the lower reaches of the thermosphere, SpaceShipTwo is designed to rotate its wings by 65

°, so that the body of the craft creates a very large amount of drag while the wings remain upright to guide the ship and provide a type of fail-proof stability. The high drag combined with the low weight of the craft ensures that surface temperatures remain low, preventing any risk of burning up upon re-entry.

On May 4th, the Virgin Galactic & Scaled Composites team performed the first test flight in which the VSS Enterprise deployed the feathered configuration; proving that the design is stable and ready for testing at higher velocity. Today, Virgin Galactic released the official video of the test flight, which provides a stunning look at the feathering in action.

The VSS Enterprise has flown solo seven times since it’s public debut in December of 2009, and will likely begin powered test flights in the second half of 2011. Finally convinced it’ll be safe? Then head on over to the Virgin Galactic website and reserve your spot for only $20,000.