NASA Makes Plans To Keep Lunar Orbit Free of Debris

摘要

There are well over 100,000 objects in Earth orbit, the vast majority of which are on-functioning junk in the form of satellites and satellite parts and debris from rocket launches. Even small items like nuts, bolts, chips of paint and other garbage all pose a threat to satellite operations, because they are traveling at such high speed - about 28,163.5 kilometers (17,500 miles) per hour - that even the smallest can cause damage to healthy spacecraft. While hundreds of such objects in Earth orbit fall back to the surface every year, nearly all of them burn up in the atmosphere (with the exception of a few huge rocket or spacecraft parts). But the Moon has no atmosphere and would therefore be unable to protect anyone or anything on the lunar surface from being struck by objects that fall out of lunar orbit. That is why NASA is taking steps to prevent an accumulation of debris in lunar orbit.