Columbia: Could Space Debris have Caused the Accident?

It was one of the most difficult moments of my life, to hear the news about Columbia breaking up in orbit. Human lives are never easy to lose, regardless how much they know what risks they are taking. Immediately following the disaster, reporters descended like pit bulls onto any NASA employee they could catch. They wanted someone to blame, someone who had done something negligent. It is never as easy as that.

In this age of technology, we think once something is done twice, it becomes routine and we tend to ignore it. Most people didn't even seem to know that a shuttle was up in orbit, let alone which shuttle and who was aboard. The real negligence may be those who take what these people do for granted.

The shuttle is really a technological marvel. It takes off like a rocket, becomes an orbiting satellite for awhile, and then returns to Earth a glider. No airplane could do that. But the shuttle is also vulnerable, because of what it must do, and the harsh environment it must operate in.

One of the dangers for the shuttle, and one which NASA is looking very hard at as a possible contributing factor in Columbia, is space junk. By junk, I am not referring to meteors, though they too can pose a hazard, I am referring to manmade things. Space debris is associated with dead satellites and spent rocket pieces. As the amount of debris grows, it collides, increasing the number of pieces.

There are about 7000 major objects in orbit, mostly in the 300-500 mile altitude range. About 2000 pieces of this trackable debris is actual payload, but of which only five percent is functional. There are about 40,000 smaller bits and pieces of rocket stage debris and other junk. There are literally millions of pieces of particles such as paint flakes, specks of insulation and dust from solid propellant exhaust.

Paint flakes and such tiny pieces of debris may sound harmless but it can do serious damage. Such flakes can travel at 18,000 miles per hour, and can and have pitted the shuttle windows. Even such tiny objects have the punch of a grand piano slamming into something at sixty miles per hour. That is one of the reasons that the shuttle orbits tail end first, to minimize chances of a collision to the crew compartment. The Mir space station was hit by such debris and there is little doubt that the International Space Station has already been hit.

NASA, the Euripean Space Agency, China, Russia, anyone who has launched something into orbit has contributed to the debris now orbiting Earth. Nothing much can be done about such debris, other than tracking what can be tracked. There is a way to control future debris however. Satellites can be rigged to deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere when they are no longer used. The same can be done with old rocket stages.

NASA is now investigating the possibility that space junk could have caused damage to the underside of Columbia's left wing. Images taken by the military show extensive damage to this area. Engineers do not believe that such damage could have been caused by the piece of insulation which fell off the external tank during launch.

I have little doubt that the shuttles will fly again, once the cause for Columbia's accident has been discerned. Let's make sure that we don't forget what these people do to further exploration and to make the world a better place.

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