Does your room look as chaotic as mine?
Do your parents constantly bug you to clean your room
Everyone constantly keeps thinking about whether our home, the roads, school, the parks, the country is clean, but no one notices beyond earth.Yes pollution in outer space
Before we talk about space pollution lets talk about pollution and why we need to do something about it
For a long time, we have taken the air we breathe for granted. 3.8 million species of plants die each year from exposure to these pollutants you may ask what is a pollutant. It is a substance that does something to make it unusable or harmful, like water or the atmosphere
And why do we need to stop pollution becaussee when we breathe polluted air it gets into our lungs they can enter the bloodstream or could be carried to our internal organs such as the brain and this can cause severe health problems such as asthma and even cancer this also reduces the quality and your lifespan. Burning plastic, driving a car which gives out the exhaust, which is also a pollutant and I’m not saying right after this speech you should stop polluting and all but you could start small suppose
1. Reduce the number of trips you take in your car.
2. Reduce or eliminate fireplace and wood stove use.
3. Avoid burning leaves, trash, and other materials.
4. Conserve energy — at home, at work, everywhere.
5. Look for the ENERGY STAR label when buying a home or office equipment.
6. Use public transportation, bike, or walk whenever possible
7. Overall reduce and reuse any type of energy resources
Now…… let’s talk about pollution in space and why??? we need to be aware of it.
As long as humans have been exploring space, we’ve also been creating a bit of a mess. Orbiting our planet are thousands of dead satellites, along with bits of debris from all the rockets we’ve launched over the years. This could pose a problem one day.
Space debris
Space debris or as some call it space junk can refer to big objects such as dead satellites
that have failed to complete their mission or been left in orbit at the end of their mission. It can also refer to smaller things, like bits of debris or paint flecks that have fallen off a rocket.
Also, The estimated amount of space debris surrounding our planet is around 34,000 to 1 millions and these pieces can be the size of 10 inches. When you thought things couldn’t worse these debris pieces can go up to 100 miles per hour or 165.93 kilometers per hour and in numbers, there are 2,000 active satellites, 3,000 dead satellites in Earth’s orbit adding that with the estimated amount of debris would be chaos, But you would say…
How is space debris avoided by all the active satelites out there ?
In total, across all satellites, hundreds of collision avoidance maneuvers are performed every year, including by the International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts live.
Fortunately, collisions are rare the last satellite to collide and be destroyed by space debris was in 2009. And when it comes to exploring beyond Earth’s orbit, none of the limited amounts of space debris out there poses a problem.
Things left on the Moon
Not only have we left a lot of space junk in Earth’s orbit, but did you know there are also objects elsewhere too, such as on the lunar surface. Some things were abandoned on the Moon, but others were placed there as mementos or time capsules. Here are some fast facts about what’s been left on the Moon:
Three Moon buggies from Apollo 15, 16 and 17. 54 uncrewed probes that have crashed or landed on the Moon and 190,000 kilograms of material left by humans on the Moon
What is the Kessler syndrome?
This is an idea proposed by NASA scientist Donald Kessler in 1978. He said that if there was too much space junk in orbit, it could result in a chain reaction where more and more objects collide and create new space junk in the process, to the point where Earth’s orbit became unusable.
This situation would be extreme, but some experts worry that a variant of this could be a problem one day, and steps should be taken to avoid it ever happening. in fact, the chances of getting hit by a piece of debris are smaller than the chance of getting struck by lightning.
And as an extra, this idea was also popularised in the movie Gravity.
Ideas to help clean space
This week scientists deployed the RemoveDEBRIS satellite that successfully fired out a net and trapped a piece of space debris that was in orbit around Earth, and NASA did not perform this, in reality, it was only done by a 100 people and a few scientists and live footage and while the latest demonstration worked, the project is still in its test phase. The box was ejected from the satellite and it is just a piece of space debris tumbling around the planet. Eventually, it is hoped that the net will be tethered to the satellite and drawn back when the debris is captured.
