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200,000 'Marbles' Threaten Space Flights
Washington (UPI) May 24, 2005 There are up to 200,000 small, untracked pieces of man-made debris that could threaten manned spacecraft, an expert said Tuesday. "Space Command only tracks objects larger than a baseball," Theresa Hitchens, director of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, told UPI. "But there are between 100,000 and 200,000 pieces of space debris it doesn't track between the size of a baseball and a marble. And there are literally millions of smaller bios of debris than that," she said. "NASA released a study earlier this year warning that the chances of the International Space Station or the Space Shuttle suffering a catastrophic accident from a collision with a piece of orbiting (man-made) space debris is only one in 200," Hitchens said. "That's a shocking number. They hope to bring the figure down to a one in 600 chance." The U.S. Air Force's Space Command currently tracks 13,000 man-made objects in space on a continual basis, of which only 6 percent are satellites. But Space Command only tracks objects larger than a baseball, Hitchens said. Related Links Center for Defense Information SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
After The Shuttle
Cape Canaveral (UPI) May 24, 2005Private companies looking to NASA to finance development of new launch vehicles to carry passenger ships to space might want to re-consider, because the leading contender for carrying the space agency's new Crew Exploration Vehicle to orbit already exists. |
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