SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Studying the Science of Space Junk
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
"Well, here it is," said aerospace engineer William Ailor as he paused next to the hulking metal shells arrayed along the plaza outside a visitors entrance at Aerospace Corp.'s El Segundo headquarters.
The stuff is junk. But, Ailor said, it's no ordinary junk. This garbage has traveled to space and back. A 150-pound hollow sphere of blackened titanium is all that remains of a motor casing from a Delta II rocket that fell to Earth in 2001, landing in the Saudi Arabian desert west of Riyadh.
A 600-pound stainless-steel fuel tank, also from a Delta II rocket, sits nearby, dented, gashed and rusty--scarred by its descent from space to a farm near Georgetown, Texas, in 1997.
Read more...
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.