Humans have ventured into space over the last 50 years, and all manner of junk has been left behind. From tiny bolts to whole space stations, people have discarded lots of stuff up there. Much of it eventually dies a fiery death as it falls through Earth’s atmosphere, but some larger debris poses risks for astronauts and spacecraft that could collide with it. Here are some of the quirkier items left in space:

1. Spatula
While spreading some goo as a test of heat-shield repair materials, spacewalking astronaut Piers Sellers accidentally lost a spatula he had been using. The mishap took place during the space shuttle Discovery‘s 2006 STS-121 flight to the International Space Station, on a mission to test new safety techniques after the 2003 Columbia disaster. "That was my favorite spatch," Sellers reportedly said. "Don’t tell the other spatulas."

2. Tool bag
Astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper lost her grip on a tool bag while doing a spacewalk in November 2008 to try to repair a jammed gear on a space-station solar panel. The 30-pound bag, filled with grease guns, a scraper tool and a couple of bags for debris, cost about $100,000. Amateur astronomers spotted subsequently spotted the bag in orbit, and North Americans can check to see if the tool bag is in their slice of the sky with Spaceweather.com’s satellite tracker.

3. Glove
Starting out the long trend of astronauts losing stuff in space, the very first American spacewalker, Ed White, let go of a glove during his first extra-vehicular activity on the 1965 Gemini 4 flight. The glove stayed in orbit for about a month before burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.

4. Tank of ammonia
This one was lost on purpose. In July 2007, NASA instructed astronauts to throw an unneeded 1,400-pound tank full of ammonia overboard. The device used to be part of the space station’s cooling system, but when the A/C was upgraded, it became obsolete. Deeming that it would take up too much cargo room to carry it back to Earth, mission managers decided to have it trashed. More than a year later, the tank burned up over the South Pacific Ocean as it hit the atmosphere.

5. Gene Roddenberry‘s ashes
A portion of the ashes of Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek series, were delivered to space in 1992 by the space shuttle Columbia on its STS-52 mission. The lipstick-sized capsule containing his ashes orbited the Earth before eventually disintegrating in the atmosphere. The rest of Roddenberry’s ashes, along with those of his wife Majel who died in December 2008, will be shipped into space along with digitized fan letters in 2010.

6. Pee
Over the years, most of the urine produced by astronauts has been simply dumped overboard. Once pee hits the cold vacuum of space, it quickly freezes into tiny crystals which then float around as debris. (Astronauts have described watching urine being released into space as one of the most beautiful sights in orbit). Recently, however, a new pee-recycling system was brought up to the International Space Station to turn urine into drinking water, cutting down on the pee debris.

7. Pliers
While repairing a damaged solar array during a November 2007 spacewalk, astronaut Scott Parazynski accidentally lost a set of needle-nose pliers, which were spotted floating away below the station.

8. Camera
Astronaut Suni Williams was tussling with a stuck solar array on the space station in June 2007 when her camera came untethered and drifted away. Rather than astronaut error, this incident may have been caused when the button holding down the camera broke. 

Watch videos and the complete article of these mishaps at Wired.Com

The Houston Chronicle has put up a flash animated version of the Space Station with all 28 proposed spacewalks. Check it out:

HoustonChronicle.com

Excellent rebuttal and here is the full first video:

(more…)

DENVER  –  Space debris disintegrated and lit up the predawn sky Thursday morning. 
SkyFOX was in the air and captured video of it as it happened.
Traffic reporter Ken Clark was doing a traffic report when all of a sudden, he saw the live video that was coming from SkyFOX. Go to the FOX site and click on the SideBar picture to see the video. Really Amazing stuff.

Another Really amazing picture to the left shows 2 galaxies merging. Our own Milky Way galaxy is set to merge with Andromeda in the FAR FAR future. Due to take place in approximately three billion years time, such collisions are relatively common—Andromeda, for example, is believed to have collided with at least one other galaxy in the past.^[8] It is possible, but not certain, that our Solar System may be ejected from the new galaxy some time during the collision. Such an event would have no adverse effect on the system (especially since Sun is projected to enter red giant phase in 5-6 billion years). Chances of any sort of disturbance to the Sun or planets themselves are remote. Warning, really large 900×1502 Pixel image.

‘Big Science’ is always suppressing The Truth with their blatant pro-evolution anti-wacko agenda: from the fact that UFOs built the pyramids to the reality of creationism and fact the universe is “Turtles All The Way Down”. It is time to fight back and urge schools to Teach The Controversy with these intelligently designed t-shirts. [LINK]

A laser was used to etch around 80,000 of the stars in the Milky Way, using three-dimensional data from the Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory. The reason the galaxy is positioned slightly to one side is that the Solar System (Earth) has been placed in the exact center. (more…)

Between the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957 and January 1, 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational – roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and GEO (GeoStationary Earth Orbit).

Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10). Officials from the space shuttle program have said the shuttle regularly takes hits from space debris, and over 80 windows had to be replaced over the years. The ISS occasionally has to take evasive maneuvers to avoid collisions with space junk.

watch clips from a 3 hour series event on theories of the universe.

source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are approaching each other, two cosmic steam engines chugging down the tracks at each other at 200 kilometers per second. This wont happen for another two billion years. Stars don’t physically collide; they’re way too small on this scale. But gas clouds can, and like I said before, when they do they form stars. So you get a burst of star formation, lighting up the two galaxies.

Eventually (it takes a few billion years), the two galaxies will merge, and will become, what, Milkomeda? Andromeway? Well, whatever, they form a giant elliptical galaxy when they finally settle down. In fact, the Sun will still be around when this happens; it won’t have yet become a red giant (4.7 billion years). Will our descendants witness the biggest collision in the history of the galaxy? (more…)