Specialists of the space agencies of many countries are in alarm: the near -Earth space is gradually turning into a real garbage dump, which is a great danger to existing spacecraft.
In confirmation of what was said, there is an unpleasant episode that occurred with the meteoruster of the European Space Agency Sentinel – 1a. A small piece of cosmic garbage literally sewed through one of its solar panels, making a hole in it with a diameter of 15 cm. This can lead to a loss of 3 % of the power of the on -board power plant.
Eka specialists can fully believe that their brainchild is very lucky. If the blow fell into a vital electronics, then Sentinel-1a, most likely, would have turned into cosmic garbage.
According to experts, millions of cosmic garbage units dangle in the near -Earth orbit – the remnants of their satellites, worked steps, fragments that appeared as a result of their countless clashes among themselves. And this is a big problem. So only last year, the ISS crews had to make maneuvers 25 times evading towards a speed of about 12 km/se -free cosmic iron.
Given the increasing danger of possible new clashes, experts develop radar systems for tracking cosmic garbage and methods for cleaning space space from it.