Earth Sky

Space junk with Jonathan McDowell

September 15, 2024
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At 12:15 p.m. CDT (17:15 UTC) on Monday, September 16, 2024, we’ll talk live about space junk and other human-made space hazards with astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. He is a space historian and the author of Jonathan’s Space Report. And he’s concerned about the consequences of humanity’s presence in Earth-orbit, about how we’re already polluting our new home in space. McDowell has said:

The track record of the human species is not that great. All of these issues that cause us trouble here on Earth, we’re going to export them into space. That’s just the way it is.

As an illustration, the first satellite – Sputnik – was launched to Earth-orbit in 1957. Then for decades, the world was shooting around 150 objects per year – satellites, probes and landers, crew capsules, space station modules – into Earth-orbit.

But, in 2017, everything changed. The number of launches skyrocketed. In 2023, humanity flung 2,664 objects into Earth-orbit. Almost all of them are still up there. NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office estimates there are more than 25,000 objects drifting free in Earth-orbit 4 inches (10 cm) or larger. Nearly 500,000 smaller bits of space junk – 0.4 to 4 inches (1-10 cm) – and 100 million microscopic particles pepper low Earth orbit. In 2022, their mass exceeded 19.8 million pounds (8.9 million kg).

McDowell put the possible danger plainly in the HBO documentary Wild, Wild Space. Watch the Wild, Wild Space trailer below:

Meet astronomer, astrophysicist and spaceflight expert Jonathan McDowell

Jonathan McDowell is an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’s Chandra X-ray Center. McDowell is the author and editor of Jonathan’s Space Report, an email-distributed newsletter documenting satellite launches. McDowell’s main research interests include: the cosmological microwave background; the X-ray emission from the merging galaxy Arp 220; the nature of the broad emission line region in quasars; the broad-band spectral energy distribution in quasars; and studying nearby galaxies with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In software, McDowell helped design the CIAO data analysis package and the software infrastructure for the Chandra data processing pipelines. More recently, McDowell led the creation of an exhibit of astronomical images at the Smithsonian. Minor planet (4589) McDowell is named after him. Image via Jonathan McDowell/ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Bottom line: Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell will discuss humans’ unexpected impacts on space LIVE with EarthSky at 12:15 p.m. (17:15 UTC) on Monday, September 16. Join us!

Learn more about Jonathan McDowell

Dave Adalian

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About the Author:

Award-winning reporter and editor Dave Adalian’s fascination with the cosmos began during a long-ago summer school trip. That fieldtrip never ended, and still Dave pursues adventures under the night sky.

Dave grew up in California’s Tulare County – where the San Joaquin Valley meets the Sierra Nevada – a wilderness larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

He studied English, American literature and mass communications at the College of the Sequoias and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked as a reporter and editor for a variety news publications on- and offline during a career spanning more than 30 years.



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