Grant County space junk from 2021 (GCSO)
Apparently, earth’s orbit is looking like a wrecking yard. This is a picture of a piece of a Space X rocket that landed in a farmer’s field in Grant County in 20212.
Senate approves bill to clean up space junk
WA Senator Maria Cantwell and Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper co-sponsored the bill, which passed the US Senate unanimously. The Orbital Sustainability Act, or ORBITS, would commit $150 million dollars to allow NASA to create a program for removing the debris.
According to various sources, there are at least 900,000 individual pieces of debris orbiting Earth, with a collective weight of about 8,000 metric tons. A metric ton is 2,204 pounds, as opposed to a standard ton being 2,000.
Space X, Spoke Space Technologies, and Amazon’s Kuiper Systems are said to be working on programs to lessen the amount of debris their rockets and other ‘inventions’ leave in orbit.
You might remember two years ago, a large piece of a Space X rocket landed in a farmer’s field in a remote area of Grant County, and Senator Cantwell said, according to The Center Square, a piece of debris the size of a car landed recently in Australia.
The Grant County junk was about the size of a water heater.
Not all of the debris burns upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and there are growing fears people could be injured, and damage occurring from this ‘junk’ raining down on the planet.
There are also real concerns that damage could be done to satellites and other active equipment in space from all the orbiting debris.
The bill will now go to the US House for consideration.
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