Yet another Wall Street Journal article about space debris

[UsableThought]

The Wall Street Journal is definitely interested in space debris - dead satellites, boosters, etc. - as they've run a number of stories on this topic over the past few years. E.g. Wikipedia has a link to a story from 2009 as one of the footnotes to their article on space debris, plus a web search turns up a couple of articles in the Journal from 2011 - "Fighting Space Junk: The Next Generation" in August and "Can the Pentagon Save Earth from Space Junk" in May of that year.

The Journal's latest is a front page article this morning, "There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing Into Things." Subtitle is, "A growing band of debris and tiny satellites imperils the Hubble Space Telescope and equipment used for phones, national security and weather forecasting." Like all their articles it's behind a pay wall; so I am curious, if anyone here subscribes to the Journal, could you read the article & post a brief summary? No need to quote at length, I am just wondering what the impetus is for a new article - has there been a new development in this ongoing problem and if so what? Thanks.

P.S. Mods, if you feel this thread is in the wrong forum, feel free to move. I am required to add a prefix to the title which seems a bit odd - this is not a B, I, or A thread. It does relate to astronomy & stargazing given that we wouldn't want space junk to take out the Hubble. Or anything else - I was just reading in a book I have on stargazing (Night Sky with the Naked Eye) & saw some photos of astronauts relaxing inside the ISS - I wouldn't want space junk to hit that either.

 

[Stavros Kiri]

Interesting topic! I will follow up + perhaps come back after doing some reading.

It does relate to astronomy & stargazing given that we wouldn't want space junk to take out the Hubble. Or anything else - I was just reading in a book I have on stargazing (Night Sky with the Naked Eye) & saw some photos of astronauts relaxing inside the ISS - I wouldn't want space junk to hit that either.

Definitely [stargazing ...], I agree. Also potentially these things could provide "spectacles" or "undesired visitors" if diverted into our atmosphere (kind of artificial meteors or meteorites [the largest ones even hitting the ground] ...) ...