As if the environmental problem on our planet wasn’t bad enough, NASA is keen to let us know they are there 27,000 pieces of space junk of variable length, floating in space. According to the Agency, this value will grow exponentially with the “colonization” of the low-Earth orbit (LEO).
If you think this is a trivial dilemma, you are very mistaken: while we fight global warming every day, the International Space Station (ISS) and other satellites have to navigate in a “tidal wave” of space debris. Man-made structures are constantly at risk because it is unknown when and what material might come across their trajectory.
To publicize this problem, Neil DeGrease Tyson, an astrophysicist, posted (the content is no longer available) on Twitter an image of a large block of aluminum that it is smashed by a very small piece of flying space junk, weighing about 14 grams. How did this reaction come about?
Tyson explains that the cause was due to the speed of the object, in fact it was traveling at 24,000 km/h, many times faster than a bullet.
As reported by Big Thinkthe image was originally posted on Reddit by an engineer, to demonstrate the damage caused by small objects traveling through space. The CEO of SpaceXElon Musk, reacted to Tyson’s tweet by stating that this danger is the main reason why the capsules SpaceX Dragon they have shields.
