Cool Geo-Pic: Space Debris

This Cool Geo-Pic comes again from NASA's Earth Observatory. At first this is a very startling image of "trash in space". Luckily the dots are not to scale, and can be compared to other exaggerations of "blackening the sky...".

Quick "Cut & Paste" Highlights:

" ... Orbital debris, or “space junk,” is any man-made object in orbit around the Earth that no longer serves a useful purpose. Space junk can be bad news for an orbiting satellite.
The dots between the geostationary orbit and the low-Earth orbit are in an orbit used by GPS satellites or a highly elliptical orbit, called Molniya, used to monitor the far north or south. To read more about common satellite orbits, see Catalog of Earth Satellite Orbits on the Earth Observatory...."

"....Though the black dots that represent objects in space swarm around the Earth, obscuring the surface in the lower image, the space junk situation is not as dire as it may appear. The dots are not to scale, and space is a very big place. Collisions between large objects are fairly rare...."

download large Low Earth Orbit image (444 KB, PNG) acquired August 25, 2009

Full Article - Click Here


References / Credits:

NASA Orbital Debris Program Office. (2009, July). Orbital debris frequently asked questions. Accessed September 11, 2009.

NASA illustration courtesy Orbital Debris Program Office. Caption by Holli Riebeek.

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