Space Junk

Guest: Don Kessler, retired NASA Senior Scientist, Chairman of National Research Council Committee for the Assessment of NASA’s Orbital Debris Programs If you’ve ever gotten a chip in your windshield from a pebble on the freeway, you know the danger of high speed. So imagine the damage even a paint flake can do hurtling through space at seven times the speed of a bullet. A window on the International Space Station recently got a small crater from what was probably just that – a tiny flake of paint that came off a satellite or rocket. Earth’s orbit has become increasingly hazardous in the 50 years people have been sending stuff up there. Tens of thousands of pieces of debris are floating around up there, colliding to create even more debris, which pose a threat to the space station, shuttles carrying astronauts and satellites with important work to do.