Dear readers, in the current situation where we are making all efforts to make earth cleaner, greener & sustainable, there are people, who are responsible for debris in outer space. There is greater awakening in the lobby of scientists who are studying this aspect carefully.

I read this report online on ?Gulf News? today on 16-Mar-14.

A tiny little, 1 centimeter nut may create the force of a hand grenade if collided with a space shuttle. This is not an imagination. Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) are worried that litter from man-made objects is about to reach ?criticality? in space. There is so much of debris around that it is colliding with other particles of debris. At the current rate such collisions will soon be 25 times higher than now.

This will make the space flight in low Earth orbits almost impossible.

So therefore there is urgent need of Sustainable use of ?Outer Space?. There are many possible solutions as ESA are brainstorming. They are designing a hunter-killer space probe to track down and destroy defunct satellites and so halt the growth of the growing cloud. The e. DeOrbit probe would deploy a Roman gladiator-style array of nets and harpoons to first trap rogue satellites and then drag them downwards until they burn up in the atmosphere.

In May-2014 a Clean Space conference is scheduled to be held. This issue will be discussed at length in the conference. In next 10-20 years certain orbits will become unusable which are popular with communication and military satellites.

To contain this problem even if 5-10 large satellites are removed every year, it will be enough. Much of the existing debris was caused by explosions in the fuel tanks of defunct satellites or by collisions

Richard Crowther, chief engineer at the UK Space Agency, said: ?We must use space in a sustainable manner. Although the universe is effectively limitless, the region of space around the Earth is not. If we continue to contaminate near-Earth space with orbital debris, this unique resource could be lost to future generations.?

I wish to highlight that sustainability is the key word ON THE EARTH OR BEYOND THE EARTH. Please do take of the environment. Think Green.

Source: Gulf News