The Space Graveyard and the Second Moon
We hear about hundreds of space shuttles launching every year. Some of these never make it and as most of these are non-reusable spacecraft there will be debris everywhere. Have you wondered where it all goes?
There is a place known as Spacecraft Cemetery, which lies to the east of New Zealand in the Southern Pacific Ocean. It is known formally as the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area. This area is central to Point Nemo, the location furthest from any land. This isolated spot in the ocean is called the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. The cemetery has a total of more than 250 spacecrafts resting there, the largest one being the Russian space station MIR or what’s left of it. We have seen the news that the ISS has increased its orbit due to debris of satellites. Just imagine, The International Space Station which is about the size of a football field crashing down over your head. This is avoided with the help of this odd place.
Other spacecraft in the graveyard range from rocket’s secondary payloads to spy satellites, small Russian space stations, fuel tanks, and hundreds of cargo ships that carried supplies to astronauts in orbit. Russia is the main contributor to the cemetery followed by the USA. The descent to the graveyard itself is a humongous task. At first, the spacecraft is brought into the so-called orbital decay or spacecraft death before crashing to the waters. The ISS will also taste Nemo’s water in coming years.
But the the whole spacecraft will not be there because in the process of descending due to friction the spacecraft gets heated up and is broken into pieces and the leftovers crash-land. The satellites we send into farther orbits are sent to a special orbit called Graveyard Orbits which is 22,400 miles above the earth!
The so-called second moon 2020 SO was space garbage. It was a booster launched by NASA as part of American Surveyor Moon Missions in the 1960s. Initially, researchers thought it was an asteroid and later discovered that there was steel on it. The booster has been orbiting the sun in earth’s similar orbit which led to the conclusion that it was sent from earth. The mini-moon will be leaving us by March 2021.
Quite an informative piece indeed! For more articles like these, stay tuned to PaperKin.
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