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Tracking of space junk by NASA will continue, the magazine New Scientist has reported. Space junk is the artificial debris produced by space missions and can cause serious damage to spacecraft due to collisions. Fragments of debris larger than 10 cm in Earth orbit are tracked using military radar by U.S. Space Command, however, only NASA monitors the orbits of debris between 1 and 10 cm in size. Although small, these artificial objects can still cause significant damage to spacecraft and thus pose a serious hazard. NASA estimates that there are around 10,000 fragments of debris between 1 and 10 cm in orbit around the Earth.
Radar observations are also being used by NASA scientists to observe Near Earth Objects. Radar can measure an asteroid's distance from the Earth to 10 metres and its speed to within a millimetre per second as well as providing information on its size and shape. Observations using radar, therefore, allow the orbit of NEOs to be determined much more accurately than by other techniques. Although its use is limited to objects that pass relatively close to the Earth it does allows their impact probability to be evaluated with a high degree of confidence.
Following uncertainty in the future funding of NASA radar projects, New Scientist reports that NASA will now continue to provide half a million dollars funding for radar research using the Arecibo radio telescope and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. A further three million dollars will ensure that space junk will also continue to be tracked by NASA over the next year.
More info: New Scientist
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