When Space Gear Turns Into Space Junk

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston, Nov. 25, 2008 — -- When astronomer Kevin Fetter spotted the bright object streaking across the sky, he had a pretty good idea what he was looking at: astronaut Heidi Stefanyshyn Piper's tool bag.

Fetter trained his telescope on the item and recorded it streaking across the sky. What was once a $100,000 tool bag is now just another piece of space junk.

The numbers are staggering: 13,000 pieces of junk larger than 10 meters are orbiting in space. There are at least an additional 100,000 pieces of orbital debris that measure between one and 10 centimeters, and the number of pieces smaller than one centimeter orbiting around Earth is in the millions. It's a mess up there.

Why does NASA care so much about all the space junk? It only takes one tiny micrometeoroid to punch a hole in the International Space Station or the space shuttle and that could cause catastrophic damage.

When an astronaut needs to throw something away on the space station there aren't many options. They can stash it and wait for a progress supply ship to take it away, or return it on one of the rare shuttle flights.

But when you have something really big you can't stash it in a supply ship.

Astronaut Clay Anderson shoved a big piece of hardware off the International Space Station in July 2007 during a spacewalk. The item was a coolant storage unit on the International Space Station -- an EAS, for early ammonia servicing unit. It weighed 1,360 pounds and it was big enough that no one at NASA made the decision to toss it overboard lightly.

The EAS finally re-entered Earth's atmosphere Nov. 3, and what was left of it splashed harmlessly into the Indian Ocean south of Tasmania overnight.

Fetter tracked the EAS as it came down from space.

The Department of Defense tracks objects larger than 10 centimetersand if it looks like something will come close enough to the International Space Station to worry flight directors, then Mission Control can initiate course maneuvers for the space station to keep it from being hit.