THE only experiment designed to study dangerous space debris too tiny to be tracked by radar has been cancelled by the US Department of Defense鈥檚 Space Test Program.
Low Earth orbit is littered with millions of pieces of debris smaller than 10 centimetres across, created by broken-down satellites as well as dust from comets and asteroids. This unseen flotsam can endanger satellites and other spacecraft. 鈥淭he threat is real,鈥� says J. C. Liou of NASA鈥檚 Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
鈥淭his unseen space debris can endanger satellites and other spacecraft鈥�
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An international team had been planning to study this debris with the Large Area Debris Collector, which was due to be sent to the International Space Station on the shuttle in 2008. LAD-C was supposed to capture and catalogue the debris using a sponge-like aerogel mounted on a 10-square-metre aluminium grid.
Ironically, the cancellation of LAD-C comes hard on the heels of a Chinese anti-satellite weapons test on 11 January that generated more debris than any other satellite break-up ever 鈥� 900 fragments larger than 10 centimetres across and 35,000 smaller objects of at least 1 cm.
