NEW YORK: Approximately 3,000 tons of space junks currently are currently in low Earth orbit, mostly in the area 500 miles (800 km) above the planet’s surface.
To address the potential threat of debris impacting satellites, spacecrafts, and even the International Space Station (ISS), some NASA researchers suggest using lasers to destroy space junk.
The lasers could be fired from a position on the ISS and eventually by a satellite designed specifically for this purpose, according to Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, an astrophysicist and chief scientist at the RIKEN (Rikagaku Kenkyūsho) Computational Astrophysics Laboratory in Wako, Japan.
The amount of space debris is steadily increasing and consists of old satellites, rocket parts, and fragments of prior collisions. Because some of these fragments are traveling very fast, about 22,370 mph (36,000 km/h), even something the size of a screw can do tremendous damage to a satellite.
Impacts by objects smaller than 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) do not present a threat to the ISS, which has protective shielding.
Objects 4 inches (10 cm) or larger can be easily detected from Earth before they do any damage.
The real danger comes from debris fragments between 0.4 and 4 inches (1 to 10 cm), which are too small for easy detection but can be devastating to a spacecraft or satellite.
