There has been a bit of news lately about the astronauts losing stuff in space. I guess they’ve had some trouble misplacing screws and bolts and spatulas and what not. But really, shouldn’t we give them a little slack? How easy can it be do do anything floating around in zero gravity encased in a large puffed-up suit?

But there is quite a bit more than a spatula out there in the ether.

The US Space Surveillance Network tracks around 9,000 objects in orbit that are bigger than a few centimetres. Of these, 17% are used rocket bodies from launches, 31% are operational or retired satellites, 38% are fragments from previous collisions and 13% are “mission related debris” - bolts and other spare parts.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 1:22 am and is filed under Daily, Found Sci-Fi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.