Thrust and Parry

Anyone have a really big net?

nationalpost:

‘Space trash’ just misses $100b station
Six astronauts were forced to take refuge aboard the International Space Station’s “lifeboat” craft Tuesday, bracing for the threat of a collision with floating space debris.

“A situation arose linked to unidentified ‘space trash’ passing very close to the space station. The crew was told to take their places aboard the Soyuz spacecraft,” the Russian space agency Roskomos said.

Space debris a growing problem. Millions of chunks of metal, plastic and glass are whirling round Earth, the garbage left from 4,600 launches in 54 years of space exploration.

The collision risk is low, but the junk travels at such high speed even a tiny shard can cripple a satellite costing tens of millions of dollars.

Around 16,000 objects bigger than 10 centimetres across are tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network.

There are about 500,000 pieces of 1 cm to 10 cm, while the total of particles smaller than 1 cm “probably exceeds tens of millions,” NASA says.

Photo: A computer-generated artists impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. (ESA/AFP/Getty Images)