madame scientist's not-so-mad musings

Space Janitor to clean up junk: In a promising update on the alarming space junk problem, Swiss scientists plan to launch CleanSpace One by 2015. Measuring only 12 inches long, this device will rendezvous with the defunct Swisscube satellite, grab it and drag it down to the atmosphere so they burn up together. It’s a low budget prototype that is a step in the right direction.

Great video via Jeffrey Marsh CleanSpace One – a Swiss satellite to tackle space junk

I’m tagging everyone who participated in the original conversation, let me know what you think!

Originally shared by Rajini Rao

Space Litter: When does the garbage pick up truck come?

It’s getting crowded up there: 15,000 pieces of junk plus 1000 active satellites, and counting.

• Sources include defunct satellites, rocket stages used to place satellites in orbit, bolts and other mission-related debris, and fragments from the intentional or accidental breakup of large objects. Also, the rare failed spacecraft that has stalled in orbit, such as the Russian Phobos–Grunt probe that just crashed to earth.

• The single largest debris generating event was in 2007, when China destroyed its polar orbiting satellite with a missile, resulting in 3000 trackable objects and 150,000 fragments of >1 cm size.The accidental collision of the Russian Cosmos 2251 and US Iridium 33 satellites in 2009 was responsible for another jump in space debris in 2009. Together, these two events effectively wiped out all space debris mitigation efforts until then (see graph, image 2).

• The risk of collision and damage at low earth orbit (<2000 km) is now at a few percent, comparable to other types of satellite failure like electrical defects. The Kessler syndrome describes a potential domino effect or feedback runaway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome). Space elevators, listed in the recent BBC poll as one of the top 20 predictions for the next 100 years, would almost certainly intersect with this debris.

Read more:http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/01/14/where-did-all-that-space-debris-come-from/

Geek Humor: Very Funny. Stanford Chemistry grads parody the dreadful Double Rainbow meme. Produced by ChemWipes (a pun on the popular brand of lab tissue, KimWipes).

If you are not one of the 32 million+ who have seen the original: Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10

Epithelial Sheath Neuroma.

Red Roses and Robert Burns. A favorite poem from Scotsman Robert Burns (1794) and roses from my garden for my Google+ sweethearts 🙂

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve’s like the melodie

That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I:

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Luve

And fare thee well, a while!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.