When I happened to see this computer generated picture of earth thickly covered by orbiting artificial satellites, the immediate thought came to my mind was “how polluted our earth’s space is!”. One should keep in mind that the sizes of satellites in this picture are much exaggerated compared to the size of earth (probably this is shown so for the purpose of clarity).
Perhaps if aliens outside the earth’s atmosphere or outside our solar system turn their telescope towards earth (let’s assume or downsize their IQ as equivalent to human intelligence), they might exclaim “numerous metal birds orbiting earth like butterflies!”.
It is estimated that there are approximately 12,000 artificial objects of substantial size orbiting earth. At the same time, there has been significant increase in nations capable of launching satellites on their own, Iran being the latest.
Two big communication satellites (A Russian inactive satellite and US active satellite) collided each other sending out massive debris clouds and resulting in some sort of risk to international space station. The incident said to have occurred some 805KM over Siberia on 10th February 2009, is quite worrisome to astrophysicists.
Though it is believed that the risk to space station (which orbits in a much lower orbit) and its three astronauts is very low, soon on Feb. 22nd there is a planned space shuttle mission with 7 astronauts to take place, is to be taken into consideration too.
With numerous satellites, some with dangerous pollutants adding to earth’s orbit, wish there was a technology to retrieve the inactive ones, to reduce the space junk.
Picture Courtesy : TimesofIndia
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