New map to identify ‘space junk’ orbiting Earth

Space debris continues to fly close to the Earth’s atmosphere with the risk of always colliding with and damaging other extremely useful objects, such as meteorological satellites or GPS satellites.

Wanting to record the course of “space debris” so far, but also to predict their future behavior, the professor of aerospace Moriba Jah from the University of Texas and his research team created the map «AstraGraph», a digital map that shows in real time where each of these objects is located at any given time.

The teacher explains in BBC that, with the help of this map, experts can watch more comfortably, including 200 most unsafe “space junk” existing today, which may at some point explode or be hit by other objects, breaking into tens of thousands of other, smaller pieces.

And a new mega-radar detection in Costa Rica

A new huge space radar installed on Costa Rica will be able to detect the small space debris that until now went unnoticed by the observation instruments. The new radar was made by the company LeoLabs, which has extensive experience and know-how in this field.

“This is the most advanced space radar of its kind,” he said Dan Sepperley its CEO LeoLabs. The company is building object tracking radar in areas of the so-called low orbit around the Earth, approximately 800 km off the planet. The company plans to set up a network of such radars in many parts of the world to fully map this landfill.

Experts say that unless a way is found to remove or destroy space debris, so much will soon be done that will eventually create a dam around the Earth which will prohibit the launch of rockets carrying space missions or satellites.