Why scientists can't wait for a piece of trash to fall to Earth
Astronomers predict that on November 13 a piece of 鈥渟pace junk鈥� will plummet to Earth from above the Indian Ocean, about 40 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka. Most of the unidentified object will likely burn up, with any leftovers expected to plunge into the ocean.
Astronomers say the object, dubbed聽WT1190F, is likely a component from a rocket or from a recent mission to the moon. Skywatchers first spotted the debris earlier this month from the Catalina Sky Survey,聽a lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson that identifies asteroids and comets that swing close to Earth.
",鈥� Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Popular Mechanics. 鈥淚t's possible a few dense parts of say a rocket engine will survive to impact the ocean," he said. 鈥�
NASA estimates that there are roughly 500,000 pieces of debris orbiting the planet, and some of that detritus inevitably falls back to Earth every year. While much of it burns up in the atmosphere, it can cause problems for people on Earth. As 海角大神聽previously reported:聽"In 2006, a Chilean airliner carrying 270 passengers聽聽that was plummeting into the Pacific faster than the speed of sound."
Although space debris hits Earth each year, researchers don鈥檛 often spot it before it strikes. Identifying WT1190F before it touches down is a win for astronomers because it allows them to study its trajectory and to test their worldwide response procedures in case a dangerous space object crashes onto Earth, .
鈥淲hat we planned to do seems to work,鈥� Gerhard Drolshagen, co-manager of the European Space Agency鈥檚 near-Earth objects office in the Netherlands, told Nature. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 still three weeks to go,鈥� he said.
WT1190F is between 3 to 7 feet in size, astronomers say, and with a low density and probably hollow, suggesting it's an empty rocket stage. Dr. McDowell calls it 鈥渁 lost piece of space history that鈥檚 come back to haunt us鈥� as it is possible that the object has been orbiting far beyond the moon for decades, dating back to the Apollo program of the 1960s and early 70s.
Although this piece of debris is not expected to cause any damage on Earth when it touches down on November 13, 鈥淚 would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it,鈥� astronomy software developer Bill Gray, who has been tracking the debris with astronomers at NASA鈥檚 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Nature.
