Space debris problem highlighted in new series of photographs

THESE images aren’t conscionable a whimsical postulation of abstraction memorabilia. Part of Our Fragile Space: Protecting the near-space environment, an accumulation by lensman Max Alexander, they item a increasing problem: expanding amounts of debris are orbiting Earth successful the aforesaid portion of abstraction arsenic thousands of satellites, heightening the hazard of collisions.

Alexander collaborated with astronomy writer Stuart Clark, the University of Warwick, UK, and its Centre for Space Domain Awareness, among others, to gully attraction to the interaction of the immoderate 160 cardinal pieces of cosmic discarded circling Earth – each of which person human-made origins.

The images show: a substance vessel from the 2nd signifier of a Delta rocket that returned to Earth successful 1997, with craters from impacts with abstraction debris and micrometeorites; the power country of Chilbolton Observatory, the main UK installation for tracking civilian satellites and abstraction debris;

Pictured supra is simply a portion of an Ariane 4 rocket, which launched a outer successful 1995 that was aboriginal progressive successful the archetypal verified satellite-debris collision; a puncture made successful an aluminium sheet by a integrative projectile travelling astatine precocious velocity, arsenic portion of a survey into the effects of impacts astatine orbital velocity (pictured below);

Max Alexander

A presumption of Greenwich successful London (main picture) with a montage of examples of abstraction debris superimposed connected the sky; and pictured below, an astronaut’s mitt dropped during a spacewalk from the Gemini IV ngo successful 1965.

Max Alexander

Our Fragile Space volition tally astatine Coventry Cathedral, UK, from 6 to 21 May; astatine the Vienna International Centre successful Austria from 31 May to 9 June; past astatine Jodrell Bank, UK, from 12 June to mid-September.

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