Space Junk

There's a lot of noise this week around a whole array of grown up topics that would drive me to distraction and some so I'm just concentrating on one today.

A growing concern today is the debris that has accumulated in over fifty years of man's exploration of space from 1961and it's impact not just on earth but also other structures in space such as the International Space Station which was built in 1998 and has both Russian and American sections. 

The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, with power, data, cooling, and crew available to support experiments. Small uncrewed spacecraft can also provide platforms for experiments, especially those involving zero gravity and exposure to space, but space stations offer a long-term environment where studies can be performed potentially for decades, combined with ready access by research people.

On Monday it was announced that Russia had blown up a former spy satellite at a period of acute tensions across Europe and this had resulted in huge levels of space debris which had the potential to cause serious possibly life threatening damage to the Space Station and it's multinational crew.

It had to take emergency action and put things on hold for just over day before anyone could work on the outside.

This prompted a angry protest by many in the scientific community that whatever blowing this former satellite was supposed to had been about, their actions had been reckless in the extreme.

Russian says it wasn't much to worry about but even tiny pieces can cause huge damage in space.

Personally I feel the international community are right to call Russia out over this.