Entertainment

3D Film Will Shoot Space Junk in Your Face

Russia’s Phobos-Grunt Mars probe is expected to fall back to Earth mid-January from its failed mission. Around the same time a new film is released at space centers worldwide to raise awareness about the dangers of the more than 6,000 tons of debris orbiting Earth.

Space Junk to Raise Awareness About 6,000 Tons of Debris Orbiting Earth

Space.com has more on the IMAX 3D film “Space Junk 3D”:

Blending scientific information with state-of-the-art, 3D visualizations, “Space Junk 3D” takes the viewer from the depths of Meteor Crater in Arizona to the growing spread of Earth-orbiting debris — a troubling legacy of more than five decades of multiple nations lofting space hardware.

“After half a century of space exploration we’re now suddenly faced with what has long been a staple of science fiction … an orbiting junkyard of cast-off space debris,” notes popular British character actor Tom Wilkinson, who narrates the film.

Here‘s the film’s trailer:

Watch behind the scenes footage from the movie:

Among the items that fell to Earth, presumably from space, in 2011 were a 13-pound metal ball and NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite.

Don Kessler, former head of NASA’s Orbital Debris Office and the “Father of Space Junk,“ says it ”isn’t a coincidence that media headlines of falling debris are growing just as we launch this film. As we started researching this story we found that most scientists agree we‘ve reached this tipping point where orbital debris will continue to grow exponentially if we don’t address the problem.”

Comments (18)

  • supressorgrid
    Posted on January 7, 2012 at 10:20pm

    Launch a giant sheet of mylar acres across. cover it with glue like flypaper and put it in orbit with most of the junk. After catching all it can we send a booster rocket to the center of the sheet and boost it tward the moon.

    Report Post »  
  • LMW
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 11:55am

    I see a lot of joking about this but we are like a bad neighbor who has all of his junk and trash in his yard and refuses to clean it up. We need to do something now before a accident happens and kills someone. Would most of the smaller items burn up before hitting the earth if pushed toward the earth? The larger items should be scooped up and at least contained in some sort of holding area if we cannot bring them back to earth. It appears we really are a bunch of animals who play with their waste products and have no since of self worth. Shame on all of us.

    Report Post »  
  • orion1958
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 11:53am

    the ISS has to doge space junk just about each month now days, it’s just not reported by the news outlets. The problem with space junk is the high speed at witch it is moving. Like a fleck of paint moving at a orbital speed of 17,500 mph and it hits you in your spacesuit or spacecraft, that hit would feel like a hand grenade going off on you. So the bigger the space junk the more energy you will be hit with too.

    Report Post » orion1958  
  • SgtB
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 11:51am

    Why don’t they just launch big cubes of the gel that they used to capture comet debris up into space to capture smaller debris. Large cubes that hold together and capture debris would be easier to track than small bullet sized fragments and they wouldn’t have to be monitored or controlled in any way to do their job. Just put them in an orbit with a concentration of debris and let them go to work. Am I just taking too much of a common sense approach to this problem? Maybe we should use giant nets made out of spider silk to catch debris and we attach them to 4 separate space craft that are manned by 4 different crews that all have to work in unison to capture debris moving at mach 10 and do it so that the net doesn’t break. After every collision, the net will be jettisoned into the atmosphere to burn up with its’ payload and a new net will be deployed. Of course, the continual launching of crews and supplies for this operation will cost significant amounts of green and possibly cause more debris than it catches. I bet NASA goes with option number 2.

    Report Post » SgtB  
    • K Chad Roberts
      Posted on January 6, 2012 at 2:49pm

      “Why don’t they just” is the key phrase. Sending anything to space isn’t a “hand wavy” action. It is incredibly expensive. In addition, the movie trailer is very non-representative of what it really “looks” like up there. There are miles and miles in between these “space junks”, and they are all moving very fast. “Just” sending up large cubes (sphere would be more stable in space) of some gel wouldn’t solve the issue either. If ANYTHING is hit at tens of thousands of miles per hour by any sizable mass, it will be destroyed.

      All of the space debris would burn up in the atmosphere; none of it (to my knowledge) is large enough to survive an ‘uncontrolled’ atmospheric re-entry. That‘s not to say this isn’t a potential issue, it is… but this film, I fear, is a terrible representation of the actual issues and costs of having “junk” floating around in orbit.

      Report Post »  
    • SageInWaiting
      Posted on January 6, 2012 at 3:59pm

      There are a lot of end-of-life (dead) satellites still circling the earth. The recently launched Russian failed Mars probe is due to re-enter the atmosphere shortly. Components of these objects – fuel tanks, thermally shielded sensors – will make it to the ground. It’s only during the past 10 years or so countries have included launch weight and fuel budgets to de-orbit obsolete spacecraft.

      Report Post » SageInWaiting  
  • nojoke
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 9:54am

    Thanks Visionary1967

    Report Post »  
  • nojoke
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 7:44am

    They did a TV show in the 70′s where a junk yard/recycle yard built there own rocket to get the old debris and recycle it for profit but the show did not last long. I remember them using the cement mixer barrel as the control center of the ship.
    If somebody else remembers this and the name please post up the name of the show because I don’t remember.

    Report Post »  
  • Impenitent
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 7:12am

    Use the farce!

    Report Post »  
  • 1casawizard
    Posted on January 6, 2012 at 12:31am

    6,000 tons of space junk is not a whole lot of debris in my estimation. If a reentry into the atmosphere is to occur then a speck a little larger than a grain of sand colliding with the fragile heat tile(s) can have the same result as when shuttle Columbia reentered our atmosphere on 01feb2003. We do need better materials or protocols to handle the dynamics during reentry. If we can tackle that little issue then space junk will be like running over a cigarette butt on the road.

    Report Post » 1casawizard  
    • brickmoon
      Posted on January 6, 2012 at 4:52am

      I think the problem they’re trying to address has to do more with the risk to space stations and other satellites. It costs a lot to send stuff into orbit, so the material has to be light and thin skinned.

      About three years ago, the ISS crew had to take refuge in the attached Soyuz escape craft for a few minutes as a precaution when a 9mm piece of debris passed close by. That’s kind of like a bullet traveling about 20 times faster than if shot from a gun. Enough to ruin an astronaut’s day!

      Report Post » brickmoon  
    • dthomps6
      Posted on January 6, 2012 at 8:24am

      yeah, exactly what I think. Even if there were 50 cars worth of junk in space, that’s still spread over an enormous area. If 50 cars were hidden all over the planet, what are the chances of ever running into one? And orbits aren’t just in the same sphere, there’s different altitudes, too. So, yeah, this space junk BS is as dumb as the polar bear scare.

      Report Post » dthomps6  
  • Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
    Posted on January 5, 2012 at 11:57pm

    Yeah. I like junk in my face…….wait, that didn’t come out right.

    Report Post » Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra  
  • RN MOM
    Posted on January 5, 2012 at 11:56pm

    Great, let’s send all our environmentalists into outer-space to regulate the hell out of the clean-up. They’ll be there twice as long as necessary to actually get the job done. It’s a win/win for us!!

    Report Post » RN MOM  
    • MeteoricLimbo
      Posted on January 6, 2012 at 2:05am

      RN MOM. they can even power themselves with their own wind..use Whoopie Goldberg for an afterburner

      Report Post » MeteoricLimbo  

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