Compare and contrast this passage to yesterday's passage. How is pollution different or the same in Space and on Earth? Are humans learning from their mistakes?
Passage #2
Cleaning up the Space Junk
Have you ever looked around your room and thought “What a mess!” Would it look like a mess if every day you put away a couple toys, some clothes, or cleaned just a little bit? Now imagine your room is actually outer space and the junk is piling up! That’s exactly what scientists are encountering now. And they are starting to realize that a little cleaning can make a big difference over time.
A large cloud of space garbage actually orbits around the Earth every day. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) estimates that about 22,000 pieces of this debris are as large as a softball. The smaller pieces, about 500,000 of them, are closer to the size of a marble. Possibly hundreds of millions of smaller pieces are also floating around the planet.
Luckily, this isn’t considered to be too much garbage. Steps need to be taken to control the problem, though. As J.C. Liou, an employee of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston, says, "Orbital debris is a serious issue, but at the same time, the sky is not falling."
How Did it Get There?
When a space shuttle, satellite, or other spacecraft launches into space, booster rockets and other “waste” parts are left to float in space when the shuttle or satellite detaches. When satellites become too old to use or stop functioning, they add to the rest of the junk.
Sometimes these large chunks of space junk can crash into other objects making thousands of smaller pieces of junk. Satellites still in use become junk when they collide with debris in space. For example, a communication satellite smashed into an abandoned Russian satellite in 2009, shattering both into thousands of smaller pieces of space junk.
The danger isn’t necessarily from space junk falling to the Earth. The
larger threat comes from space junk damaging or destroying useful satellites and other craft that people send into space. Small, marble- sized bits of junk traveling at high speeds in space can cause a great amount of damage to working equipment.
Plenty of Time...But Not Too Much
The good news about all of this is that there is time to act. Liou estimates we have between ten to twenty years to think of an answer. He also believes that the problem can be helped by removing five large pieces of junk, like abandoned satellites or rockets, from outer space each year. Some researchers feel that the amount of space junk has already reached a problematic level; however, many agree that removing junk from space is the best solution.
But even though twenty years seems like a long time, and five pieces doesn’t seem like much junk to remove, a problem still remains. How do you catch and remove a large chunk of space garbage that is speeding at over 22,000 miles per hour?
Working Together
Researchers and scientists from around the world have come up with some strategies to help solve the problem. For example, some have suggested programming satellites to discharge their fuel and batteries at the end of their lives to avoid explosions upon impact with debris.
Liou claims that it is not enough to lessen the problem caused by future objects sent into space. "There is a need for a more aggressive measure to protect and preserve the environment," he said. "The time has come for us to consider active debris removal."
Some scientists have suggested lasers to push junk out of orbit and away from our planet into the far reaches of space. Others have suggested equipping spacecraft with large nets to catch and haul away debris like fish in the sea. Any of these methods would require a large amount of money and time to create and perfect the technology needed.
Whatever the answer may be, the issue is not going away on its own. It is actually becoming worse every day that nothing is done to help. The large cost and complexity of the problem, requires the help of every nation on Earth to solve it. "This is an international problem," Liou said. "We cannot do this by ourselves."