Seven astronauts on the International Space Station
were forced to take shelter in their transport spacecraft early Monday
(Nov. 15) when the station passed uncomfortably closed to orbital
debris, according to reports.
By Meghan Bartels space.com
11-16-21
The space junk passes began in the pre-dawn hours of Monday and the
International Space Station has continued to make close passes to the debris
every 90 minutes or so, according to experts monitoring the situation....
"Technically, we're talking about unidentified flying objects."
Last week, bright, flaming objects were spotted in the sky over the island of Chiloe in southern Chile before reportedly crashing to the ground and starting a series of small fires.
[...]
By Eric Mack
CNET
10-1-19
Now, after a preliminary investigation, officials from Chile's National Service of Geology and Mining say they've ruled out a disintegrating meteorite as the cause after failing to find any evidence of space rock at seven points where fires were started.
So, what are we dealing with here? Just some super-heated space junk reentering the atmosphere or is someone testing their space lasers on Chilean scrub? Technically, we're talking about unidentified flying objects. Yes, UFOs. Although nothing big or well-piloted enough to reopen The X-Files for, it would seem.
Over the past 25 years, the amount of space junk orbiting Earth has grown exponentially, and the problem is bound to get worse: Some experts claim the feared Kessler Syndrome, an unstoppable cascade of collisions, is becoming a reality.
By Tereza Pultarova
space.com
4-26-17
The U.S. Space Surveillance Network currently tracks some 18,000 objects larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters), of which only 1,200 are intact, operational satellites. In addition to that, there are 750,000 so-called "flying bullets" about 0.4 inches (1 cm) in size and around 150 million fragments smaller than 1 millimeter.
[...]
British firm Hempsell Astronautics has proposed a system dubbed Necropolis that would collect defunct geostationary satellites and deliver them to a single spot in the so-called "graveyard orbit." This area is situated a few hundred kilometers above the roughly 22,000-mile-high (36,000 km) geostationary ring.
Necropolis would consist of two spacecraft: a Hunter, which collects other spacecraft and pushes them up away from the geostationary ring, and a Terminus, the final parking spot for the no-longer-needed satellites. ...
LOS ANGELES -- People from Sacramento to Los Angeles and Las Vegas reported seeing a mysterious light streaking across the sky Wednesday night.
CBS News
7-26-16
The flashes of light spurred numerous calls to the CBS Los Angeles newsroom from people around the metropolitan area.
The light was also visible in other states, including Utah, and spurred a flood of reports and video on social media.
Witnesses said the ball of fire in the sky lasted about 30 seconds.
Vandenberg Air Force Base officials also told CBS Los Angeles they didn't have a launch Wednesday night.
The National Weather Service told the station the incident wasn't weather-related, and said in a tweet: It was seen here in Las Vegas. Looks like space debris burning up. Not confirmed." ...
Huge asteroid shooting star thing entering atmosphere over Vegas. July 27th 2016 9:40 p.m. pic.twitter.com/djdR3Xu6En
Outer space is getting very very messy. A new video hammers
home just how dramatically our space litter is accumulating.
If you somehow had a way to rocket into space prior to October 4, 1957, and look back on the Earth, you would have seen that it was a planet with nothing but the vastness of space surrounding it (well, and whatever magic capsule you were in). Fast forward to today, and that look back at our planet is very different. Since the Russian satellite Sputnik launched on that October day 58 years ago, we've sent thousands of other objects into orbit around our planet, resulting in an ever-growing storm of space junk surrounding Earth.
A recent YouTube video from Stuart Grey, a lecturer at University College London, shows, in one striking minute, just how dramatically we've littered the space around Earth over the last six decades. Grey used data from Space-Track.org, a group that monitors space debris, to build his model.
According to NASA's Orbital Debris Program, there are currently over 21,000 pieces of space junk that are larger than 10 cm (about 3.9 inches) circling our planet. In the 1-10 cm (about .4-4 inches) in diameter range, there are about 500,000 pieces, while debris measuring less than 1 cm exceeds 100 million. And if you think those tiny particles are nothing to worry about, think again. The particles can travel at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour (about 28,163 kilometers per hour), making them quite hazardous. [...]
According to NASA, there are more than 500,000 pieces of debris in orbit that are being tracked by the space agency. It’s a serious situation. The debris travels at such a high rate of speed that even a small piece of it can do significant damage if it collides with an orbiting satellite or spacecraft. To help mitigate this threat of collision, a team of researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China have come up with a solution for removing space debris. Instead of zapping the material with a laser to reduce its size, as some have proposed, the Chinese scientists want to remove the space junk completely by using it as fuel.
The idea behind the Chinese plan is simple — heat any material to ionize it and then use the ions as a propellant by moving them through an electric field. According to the proposal, the trash-eating spacecraft will capture small debris, sized less than 10 centimeters in diameter, using a net. This material then will be transferred to a ball mill that will use abrasion-resistant balls to grind the space junk into a powder.
The powder will then be fed into a propulsion system that separates the positively charged ions from the negative ones. [...]
This morning, just before 06:20 UTC and right on schedule, a small bit of space junk called WT1190F slammed into Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour. The huge pressure generated as it plowed through the air heated it up, broke it to pieces, and it disintegrated.
We’re still not sure what it was, other than it was likely a piece of hardware from an earlier mission to the Moon. But we know for a fact it burned up: We have pictures!
The photo at the top was taken by a joint aircraft mission sponsored by the International Astronomical Center and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency. They were flying over the thick clouds covering the Sri Lanka coast and were able to get some pretty amazing shots of WT1190F as it came in. Here’s a brief video featuring a short animation and some of the photos:
A state of 'Fishing Ban' and a No-Fly-Zone have been imposed in the Southern sea area and over the sky as a space debris named WT1190F is expected to enter the Earth's atmosphere on 13 November. The space junk is expected to fall into the ocean about 65km to 100 km off the southern coast of Sri Lanka.
According to the scientific information, its mass is not sufficient to cause any threat to the area as it appears to be manmade and quite small. Possibly it could burn-up when it enters the earth's atmosphere and remains will fall into the sea. [...]
A MYSTERY piece of space debris is on a collision course with the planet and you can watch it live HERE after it collides with our atmosphere.
The Slooh Telescope internet channel is broadcasting an event to coincide with the arrival of the mystery Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) named WT1190F before it ends its journey in the Indian Ocean.
The Slooh team will also discuss the growing danger of space junk orbiting Earth as the amount of objects that crash back down increases.
A Slooh spokesman said: "While there is no way to know exactly what the object is, scientists at the European Space Agency believe it is a piece of a rocket body falling back to Earth.
"Friday the 13th is going to be a lucky one for some scientists hoping to study the effects of our atmosphere on space junk.
"An object of unknown origin is expected to crash through the atmosphere and into the waters off the coast of Sri Lanka early Friday morning, and Slooh hope to have the first observations LIVE. [...]
In just over one week, three mysterious objects have fallen from the sky onto the country's southeast, prompting bomb disposal agents and experts in hazmat suits to rush over as puzzled locals looked on.
MADRID: It's raining space junk in Spain.
Rocket fuel tanks, chunks of satellites or something else entirely ... In just over one week, three mysterious objects have fallen from the sky onto the country's southeast, prompting bomb disposal agents and experts in hazmat suits to rush over as puzzled locals looked on.
First up a strange black beehive-like ball was found in Mula, a town in the region of Murcia last week.
Then at the weekend, a similar-looking, smaller object was discovered in Calasparra, just 30 kilometres (19 miles) away in the same region.
"In the early morning of the day when the first object was found, witnesses said they saw between six and seven balls of fire falling from the sky," Maria Jose Gomariz, spokeswoman for Calasparra town hall, said on Thursday.
Scientists have discovered that an unidentified flying object (UFO), which may be a piece of old ma- made space junk around a few 2m long, is headed straight for earth. The event will go unnoticed by most of the world, but the astronomers who track near-Earth objects are all in a tizzy over it. WT1190F's atmospheric re-entry is a rare opportunity for scientists to study how incoming objects interact with our atmosphere.
According to scientists, the curious object could be anything from a piece of recent lunar mission or a part of an Apollo program.
WT1190F travels a highly elliptical orbit, swinging out twice as far as the Earth-Moon distance, Gray says.
This means what we're dealing with can't be a regular old chunk of space rock, so WT1190F is this thing?
Though WT1190F might not pose a danger there have been many different proposals over the years as to how to deal with the growing problem of space junk, which could pose a risk for astronauts in space and those on Earth as well. With current survey technology, astronomers have found most objects larger than one kilometer across, but tracking smaller debris is hit or miss-mostly miss. [...]
Manmade object designated WT1190F – which could date
from Apollo space missions – to strike Earth next month
A huge piece of space debris – which may date from the Apollo space missions – is on a collision course with Earth.
Scientists warn the manmade junk, officially designated WT1190F but nicknamed WTF, will strike Earth at about 6.15am on November 13.
Much of the hollow object, which may be a spent rocket stage or panelling shed by a recent Moon mission, should burn up in the atmosphere.
But any remnants could dive bomb from the skies – and an international team of astronomers are using it to test emergency plans for dealing with potentially apocalyptic space objects.
Defense contractors take on extraterrestrial enemy: space junk
By Kansas City Business Journal
5-16-14
One of the Pentagon’s biggest contracts this year — dubbed the Space Fence — would create a radar system to track all the debris floating in space and threatening to maim or destroy satellites or manned spacecraft, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The first piece of the $6 billion contract is worth $1 billion, the report says, and directs a contractor to build a powerful radar system that quintuples the amount of space junk it can monitor. The idea is to know where it all is so officials can warn satellite operators to move to avoid collisions.
It’s a bigger problem than you might think: About a half-million bits of man-made junk are buzzing around the Earth, from spent rocket parts to paint flecks, the report says. . . .
A remarkable video of a large white object falling out of the sky over the Spanish island of Ibiza has many authorities believing it to be space junk. However, local astronomers tracked the object and say its movement could only be explained if it were self-propelled.
The object was caught on camera on April 16, 2014 at approximately 7:30 pm. That is when Eduardo de Miguel spotted something unusual in the sky. He grabbed his camera and was able to record the object for 3 minutes before losing sight of it.
The video was examined by the Astronomic Association of Eivissa who quickly ruled out a meteorite. They suspected that the UFO was a man-made object. . . .
A small Russian spacecraft in orbit appears to have been struck by remnants of a destroyed Chinese satellite. It’s just the second time in history that an active spacecraft has collided with an artificial object while in orbit.
The collision took place between Russia’s Ball Lens in the Space (BLITS) spacecraft and China’s Fengyun 1C satellite, according to the Center for Space Standards & Innovation (CSSI), based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The collision appears to have occurred on January 22, although it took over a month to determine what exactly hit the craft.
The Chinese material is considered to be “space junk” left over from when the Chinese craft was destroyed in a 2007 anti-satellite demonstration when the Fengyun 1C was intentionally demolished after exceeding its service life. The debris has posed a threat to satellites and crewed spacecraft ever since, according to Space.com.
China’s anti-satellite defense program aims at destroying satellites in space with the help of a missile, if needed. “It is necessary for China to have the ability to strike US satellites. This deterrent can provide strategic protection to Chinese satellites and the whole country's national security," said a January editorial in China’s state-run Global Times. China has since then conducted another test, in 2010.
The space collision involving BLITS was first reported on February 4 by Russian scientists Vasiliy Yurasov and Andrew Nazarenko, of the Institute for Precision Instrument Engineering (IPIE) in Moscow. They reported a “significant change” in the orbit of the BLITS satellite to CSSI, as well as changes in the spacecraft’s spin velocity and altitude. . . .
RUSSIAN space experts are seeking to solve the mystery of 'a UFO fragment' which crashed close to a remote village in Siberia.
The 'silver U-shaped device' weighs 200 kilos, has does not appear to be a rocket or a missile - or a remnant of earthly space technology.
‘The object found is not related to space technology. A final conclusion can be made after a detailed study of the object by experts,' said the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Locals insist the metallic object - resembling a large shiny rubbish bin - fell from the skies. The object is six feet long and is at least partially made of titanium steel.
It's now under police guard as interest in the 'visitor' intensifies.
Berlin–On Christmas Eve in many parts of Germany, people have observed a mysterious trail of light in the sky. For example, many excited listeners called the radio station Antenne Thüringen and reported on the phenomenon.
Eyewitnesses said they saw three glowing streaks around 17.30 clock with a broad tail, which was then dispersed into several parts. . . .
Authorities detain the man who “saw” the comet and concentrate their investigation on the gas cylinders
The young man who disseminated a photo of the luminous object that allegedly fell on the community of Esteban Echeverria has been detained for making a false statement. Researchers have now concentrated their investigations on a gas cylinder that was “jury-rigged” to an oven, according to Radio 10.
The causes of the fatal explosion in the community of Esteban Echeverria in early morning hours are becoming clearer. Today at noon, a young man who claimed having seen “a fireball” falling from the sky acknowledged that had been lying. This is the same person who disseminated the image showing an orange object in free-fall.
Authorities in charge of the investigation decided to detain the man for making a false statement and have concentrated their research on the tanks found in one of the homes. Police confiscated a 45 kg cylinder connected in a clandestine manner to a pizza oven. Preliminary investigation suggests that this connection was the source of the leak that caused the tragedy in the province of Buenos Aires.
This conclusion, however, does not account for sightings made by distant onlookers and comments made on INFOBAE that "car ignitions would not start in the wake of the explosion."
