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The Space Junk Is Falling Back On Earth

A little bit of truth — Humans pollute not just the planet Earth put also Earth’s environment via space junk. Little is said and known about the consequences of our technological evolution. And when the traces are hidden out there, in space, that’s easy.

Since the first artificial satellite launched in space, back in 1957, until today mankind created an aura of debris that surrounds Earth. We made the outer space our dumpster. It is officially called space debris: millions of pieces of defunct human-made objects in space that no longer serve a useful function.

In the Earth’s orbit lies nonfunctional spacecraft – derelict satellites and spent rockets – abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related debris, and fragmentation debris. The spacecraft disintegration, erosion, and collisions, created fragments such as paint flecks, solidified liquids from spacecraft breakups, unburned particles from solid rocket motors, etc.

US Space Surveillance Network is in charge of keeping Earth safe from space debris. They follow the behavior of the objects (position, the process of disintegration, collision with other objects) estimate the damage they can do, and try to retrain it. Because space debris represents a risk to spacecraft, and also to people living down here.

The Space Junk Is Falling Back On Earth

This seems to be the case with the mysterious bright light that streaked across the sky over Southern California, lighting up social media Wednesday night.

The American Meteor Society’s opinion on the event is that the object saw flying in the sky was not a meteorite. It didn’t have the speed, the time, nor the behavior of a meteorite.

It didn’t seem a natural object, but more like an artificial one. An asteroid is not that slow, and when it breaks up it creates a big ball of fire, not the anemic falling apart from Wednesday night. Lick Observatory in Northern California agreed. They even had an opinion on the dimension of the space junk: that was only a few inches long. Paul Lynam, the astronomer making the declaration told the Times.

“It’s a good demonstration of the physical forces at work when you see these spectacular things.” He called the event “a spectacular thing”, thus perverting the reality: a space object like a satellite or rocket engine has fallen, and there are millions out there.

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