Sunny with a chance of space junk
With the recent crash of NASA's UARS satellite, we thought we'd chronicle the re-entry of space junk over the years. 22,000 pieces of debris are currently being tracked in orbit by NASA, with millions more too small to detect. Hundreds return to Earth, usually undetected, each year. Here are just some of them.
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Space dump
22,000 pieces of space junk are currently being tracked - with millions too small to detect. Here, the age-old adage applies: what goes up, must come down. Look out!
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Space junk these days is through the roof!
75-year-old pensioner Peter Welton got quite a fright when a red-hot piece of space junk crashed through his roof in Hull, England. Welton donned his wife's favourite oven mits to carry the two kilogram, football sized object downstairs. The mass of metal could belong to anything - from a space shuttle to an abandoned satellite.
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The sky is falling!
People gather around a spherical object, which may be a hydrogen containment tank, on a chicken farm in Nacogdoches, Texas, USA in 2003. The object fell from the disintegrating Space Shuttle Columbia.
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G'day, Space
Farmer James Stirton examines a piece of space debris that fell onto his property at Cheepie, 130km from Charleville in southwest Queensland. It is believed to be a helium or nitrogen tank used to blast a US solar satellite into space in 2007.
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Ship to shore
A recovery ship tows NASA shuttle Discovery's solid rocket boosters back to shore. The event is met with fanfare - as tugboats shoot water cannons to welcome the arrival. Pieces of NASA's shuttles that separate during takeoff land in a designated 'splash zone' in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Marge, the rains are 'ere!
Part of the NASA Skylab satellite, which fell onto Western Australia in 1979, sits atop the Esperance museum roof. This particular segment of debris still has the ship's name visible on the side. The satellite, at 68 tonnes, was one of the biggest pieces of space junk to hit Earth.
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Mummy, is that where babies come from?
More pieces of Skylab are on display in the Esperance museum. Despite their strict rules about space agency property, NASA has allowed the debris to stay in Australia. In 2000, they wouldn't allow a Texan man to convert a rocket nose cone into a hot tub. What an outrage!
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Arabian Flights
This upper stage of a PAM-D rocket was found in the Saudi Arabian desert. The debris was found to be part of NAVSTAR 32, a GPS satellite. So now I know why, in 2001, my Navman tried to direct me to a Middle-Eastern desert!
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Just your average day...
A man in Altai, Siberia, walks past a piece of space junk that landed in middle of the town. Segments from space launches in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, such as debris and toxic fuel, land here often. Injuries and poisonings have forced Russian Space Agencies to find a new launch pad.